


Life is Unknowable

by DarkTidings



Series: Grenade Moment [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Caretaking, Cats, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, Medical Procedures, Medical Professionals, Mental Health Issues, Past Lori Grimes/Rick Grimes, Past Rick Grimes/Shane Walsh, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:35:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 40,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26015107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkTidings/pseuds/DarkTidings
Summary: AU: Pediatric nurse practitioner Alejandra Ybarra survives the massacre of patients and staff in the hospital by hiding under a sink in a medication room. She honors the sacrifice of the doctor who saved her by caring for the sole other survivor of the military's slaughter: Deputy Rick Grimes.
Relationships: Morgan Jones/Jenny Jones, Rick Grimes/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Grenade Moment [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1888204
Comments: 243
Kudos: 132





	1. Saving Lives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for the aftermath of executions of medical staff at the hospital in King County.
> 
> As requested by by DieAvocado and Veronica. :)
> 
> First Chapter is identical to the draft chapter posted on the Bunny Farm, but there are series notes that may be new if you read the End Notes.

_The grenade moment. Life has been trundling along and then, bang, with no warning, it explodes. Something makes your soul cry out, whacks you in the stomach with an iron bar, makes you feel that some outside agency has reached a fist into you, unfurling angry fingers and tearing your heart from your body. Life has changed forever; perhaps it has now become unlivable.”_

_“That’s what the grenade moment does. It separates the old life from the new and there will forever be a divide. The blade has come down. Life as we knew it has been detached, truncated. What lies on the other side is both unknowable and unthinkable.”_

_From A Manual for Heartache by Cathy Rentzenbrink_

** June 3, 2010 **

What once was Alex Ybarra’s refuge - the one place where she felt in control of life - has disintegrated into complete chaos. When she came in for her shift after a spare few hours of sleep at home, the higher ups said that the military is helping to evacuate, and initially, they do. Alex’s tiny, delicate charges are long gone, airlifted from rural King County to Atlanta or other sites considered more secure in their infrastructure. Her place of employment is only a Level II for the nursery, rating only a special care nursery, not a full NICU.

“Alejandra? What are you still doing here?” She turns to see the tall form of the Head of Pediatrics, Dr. Samuel Myers, striding toward her.

“Checking to see that we didn’t miss any pediatric patients.” Her reply is distracted as she checks the overfull clipboard, stuffed with patient overviews originally printed in multiple copies. Copies went with patients on the aircraft that flitted them away to safety. She keeps having the eerie feeling a baby or child might have been missed.

“I arranged for you to leave with the last of the newborns.” Dr. Myers looks genuinely distressed, almost to the level she would call distraught. One of the reasons Alex chose pediatrics as her specialty was that the doctors tended to be more human and less overbearing, and Myers is a prime example of the kind and gentle aspect of the profession.

“They said, but they’re short on nurses to get the other patients covered until we’re fully evacuated, so I stayed.”

She frowns, because Myers flinches. What does he know that he isn’t telling? He glances back over his shoulder down the deserted hallway. Unlike Alex, the other two nurses did evacuate with their small patients. As far as she knows, she and Myers are the last two employees left on the floor, now that she’s finished her bed check.

“Dr. Myers?”

Myers whips his head back around to look at her, and she notices for the first time that he’s disheveled in a way she’s never seen him. He’s never been a peacock, not like the younger pediatrician that works here, but he’s always been carefully tidy. Now, his salt-and-pepper hair looks like he spent hours yanking on it, and he is without his colorful stethoscope and its little animal face snap-ons that keep the children entertained. She’s never seen him without it.

“Alejandra? You really shouldn’t be here.”

There’s loud noises from the floor above, and the sound of the elevator moving. Myers grabs her, the move so unexpected that Alex doesn’t even begin to fight him as he drags her bodily toward the medication room. He jabs his code in and shoves her inside.

“Hide. Do not come out no matter what.”

“Dr. Myers? What’s going on?”

He fumbles at a pocket and shoves a crumpled piece of paper at her. “Hide. Please, just hide. Be quiet and stay safe.”

The push backwards he gives her tumbles her to the ground in sheer shock, and he yanks the door closed. She hears the electronic locks engage, even as her bruised palms and posterior begin to sting. Still sprawled on the floor, she carefully unwads the paper, seeing the fax headers that label it from the army medical center at Fort Gordon.

It’s scrawled in barely legible writing, not typewritten.

“Evacuate your staff. Orders given to consider all adults as contagious and to terminate without hesitation.”

It isn’t signed, but Alex has heard Dr. Myers mention a colleague who chose military service over civilian. It explains his hurried advice as the first cases of the so-called flu drifted into the hospital, to disable the brain of any deceased patients. He’s had military contact all this time.

But surely the military won’t execute civilians simply for being on the staff in an infected hospital? The public would never stand for that level of martial law and paranoia. She rolls to her knees, standing with a wince.

Despite her mental rejection of the idea, she can’t shake Dr. Myers' almost palpable fear. He’s one of the most level-headed men she’s ever met in her life, and he was terrified.

Just as she reaches the door, she hears voices. They’re muffled by the solid wood of the medication room door, but she can tell the newcomers sound angry. Myers’ reply is even more muffled. Before she can open the door to peek out, there’s the sound of gunfire. Rapid shots, like Alex has only ever heard on television before.

She only keeps from crying out by pressing both hands hard over her mouth. She’s beginning to hyperventilate as she creeps backward from the door, eyes frantically scanning the room for a place to hide.

Can they get into a room secured by an electronic code? Will they even bother to search a place not intended for people anyway?

Alex can’t take the chance. The room is too open, meant for preparing medications to dispense on the floor. But there’s a sink, and it’s the first time in her life that she’s been grateful for her small stature. Folding herself into the cabinet quickly, she pulls the doors shut.

Curled in the darkness, she prays, clutching the rosary out of her pocket and trying to draw comfort from the cool stone beads and metal sliding through her fingers.

Hours pass, judged by the brief glimpses she risks of her watch in the darkness. The building rocks a few times by what she thinks are explosions. She wonders if she’s escaped the fate Myers feared only to die in a pile of rubble, trapped under a sink.

Finally, she can’t stand the claustrophobic location anymore. If she’s going to die, she’ll die, but it won’t be under a damn sink smelling of metal and disinfectant.

It takes a good five minutes, sprawled in the floor on her belly, for her limbs to move past the driving pain of circulation returning. Once she can stand without feeling like she’s walking on hot coals, Alex eases the door open. Slow. Easy. Hopefully without being noticed if anyone is still on the pediatric and maternity floors.

The lighting is dim, only the pediatric wing lights still on in her limited viewpoint, and the nursing area lacks windows due to design reserving them for patient areas. From the flickering down the maternity wing corridor, damage is causing the lack of lighting, not that someone actually turned them off. She creeps along against the nursing desk, glad that the hospital design places the medication room behind the bulky half circle desk.

Listening, she hears nothing but her own carefully modulated breathing. It’s so quiet Alex thinks she can hear her own heartbeat.

Risking being seen, she rises slowly to her feet in a crouch, peeking over the desk. There’s no movement toward either corridor, but it lets her spot the most horrifying thing she’s seen so far since the damned world started falling apart.

Lying sprawled in the brightly lit pediatric corridor is Samuel Myers. The wall bears witness that he was standing when he was shot, bits of blood, bone, and brain matter splattered like some scene out of a Dick Wolf crime show. Blood pools around the body, soaking his white coat and navy blue scrubs. She whimpers, fear of discovery battling with the need to make sure he’s so deathly still because he really is dead. Her nursing training wins over terror.

But it’s to no avail. The kindly man who always treated everyone with gentlemanly respect, from doctors to janitorial staff, is dead and probably has been since she heard the gunshots hours before. There’s no chance it’s an accident. Even without police or military training, with only Hollywood to go by, there’s no mistaking Myers was executed.

Three wounds to the chest, one to the head. He was kneeling by the time of the final shot, with the evidence of his position like gruesome graffiti on the wall behind him.

Alex does make it to the unisex visitor’s bathroom before she vomits, body wrenching over the toilet as she sobs. Fear, loss, confusion - all war with one another. She flushes the toilet and rinses her mouth before venturing back out.

He did his best to save her, first with the evacuation orders and then by stuffing her in a room those unfamiliar with a hospital are unlikely to search. She cannot leave this man to rot in a hallway, even if the world’s gone insane.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a little voice spawned by her medical training babbles about shock, but she ignores that information. It takes nearly an hour and the help of one of the patient lifts because he outweighs her by a good eighty pounds. When she’s done, Samuel Myers is reclined on a bed once reserved for his own patients.

Nothing can truly hide the damage to his body, but she’s done her best. As long as you ignore the smudges on the surgical cap tucked too low on his forehead and the complete stillness of his chest and limbs, he could be sleeping. A doctor gone exhausted by too long on duty, stealing a catnap in an empty patient room.

It takes another half hour of scrubbing to remove the evidence in the hallway.

Alex spends a full hour sobbing and naked in one of the patient showers on the maternity wing, the patient room mostly dark from the damaged electrical. Sunlight still streams into the big, bright windows meant to keep new mothers cheerful, as if the world hasn’t given itself over to madness and the cold-blooded murder of gentle old men who spent their entire lives dedicated to healing children.

Her body is frigidly cold when she finally shuts off the water. She towels off mechanically, her brain feeling as dull and foggy as it did after the one and only hangover she experienced in college. She has no scrubs or clothing, so she wraps herself in one of the extra towels and ventures toward the tiny staff room where all the nurses keep spare changes of clothing.

The black jeans and red T-shirt seem alien to her when she tugs them out of her locker. She stuffs them back, opting only for the spare underwear and socks. Her shoes survived the cleaning spree, so after she dons a new set of scrubs. The bright yellow worn by pediatric nursing staff never seemed so completely out of place.

She could go home, but there’s nothing there for her to go to. After the warning of military slaughter, she doesn’t trust the radio broadcasts that were telling people to evacuate to Atlanta, either. She knows the hospital evacuation was not complete. Her floor went first, and the last helicopter left only half an hour before Myers found her. There’s no way they got the immobile, long-term patients out.

Disassembling one of the low-tech, telescoping IV poles, she arms herself with the metal rod and heads into the stairwell. She knows why the executioners shot poor Dr. Myers in the head despite the damage done to his chest. This might not be one of the larger hospitals, but they did learn, after losses in the emergency room and surgical floors, that whatever reanimates the dead requires an intact brain.

Alex very carefully doesn’t think of the colleagues who died to learn that theory and damns the government for not sharing. There’s no way they didn’t know, especially faster than rural hospitals like her own.

The third floor is an exercise in terror. She puts down three walkers the military failed to execute properly. Two are patients, gowns trailing around their grayed bodies. The third is a nursing student that Alex knows and wishes somehow, someone had looked after the girl like Myers tried to do for Alex. But there’s no signs of actual life anywhere on the floor. She does her best not to look directly at the four bodies in staff clothing near the elevator, all executed the same way as Dr. Myers on the second floor.

She heads for the fourth floor, where the long-term care patients reside. Someone’s blocked off the doors to one wing, chaining it shut and declaring ‘DON’T OPEN, DEAD INSIDE’. She wants to tell the culprit, ‘no shit’. Fingers strain at the door, skeletal and oozing. The odor alone is one of the worst she’s ever experienced.

Near the elevators, bodies lie in a row once again. Seven. Four staff, three in civilian clothing she thinks were probably family members desperately trying to see their loved ones evacuated as promised. She carefully ignores the distinctive haircut and professional color of the one in nursing scrubs. She isn’t ready yet to recognize more colleagues.

Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Room by room, she makes her way down the long-term wing. Patients lie dead in their beds, evidence of their passing splattered in their forehead. In some rooms, machinery still bleats warnings, with enough power - emergency or otherwise, she isn’t sure - keeping unneeded computerized IV medications going and monitors trying desperately to alert staff that the patients the monitors supervise are well beyond the limitations set for the equipment.

She switches off the alarms methodically. Unplugs IVs so they don’t join the cacophony of alerts once their meds and fluids run out.

It’s such a routine, almost muscle memory, that when she finally finds the room where the machines aren’t crying out for attention, she almost doesn’t notice.

There’s no bullet wound in the man’s forehead. Somehow, someone got sloppy. How or why, she will probably never know. But she’s cautious still, remembering nurses eaten by patients they tried to help. She waits until she sees the barely noticeable rise of his chest. Breathing, and on his own. There’s no ventilator in the room, unusual for long-term care, but not impossible.

Her hand trembles as Alex reaches under the covers, grasping his ankle and letting her fingers find the posterior tibial artery. From the foot of the bed, she’s got more of a chance to defend herself if he turns. She grips her improvised and gory weapon so tight her hand aches.

The pulse is faint, but there.

She risks moving higher, pressing her fingers to the inside of his elbow to a better pulse point.

Medical training kicks in as her eyes stay on her watch, held so she keeps the metal pole between herself and the man. Bradycardic, feeble, irregular.

She realizes she knows this patient. It’s the deputy shot ten days ago, and his care is both gossip and prayer around the hospital like few other patients. He was taken off the medications keeping him in a medically induced coma three days ago, but did not wake.

Now he’s abandoned in a building full of the dead, unaware of the world dying around him. She prays none of the dead by the elevator were his family.

Perhaps the kindest thing would be to let him go. To complete what the military started and failed to finish. But Alex trained as a nurse, six grueling years of education to save lives, not end them.

She scrambles for a terminal, praying the servers are still functioning and accessible. The printer whirs and grumbles, spitting out document after document. He isn’t her patient, and she desperately needs this information to even begin to stabilize him.

Alex knows it is illogical, but she doesn’t fight the growing feeling that she has to stay, has to save this man to atone for Dr. Myers’ willingness to sacrifice himself while she hid behind a locked door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Grenade Series: three parallel stories, filling multiple requests: Rick's nurse - who is/was she - and could she live, combined with a viable Shane/Lori story actually set in the ZA. Also requested - Daryl/Michonne, Merle/Princess. 
> 
> This series will contain references to homophobia (especially internalized homophobia) typical to small town Southern culture due to a past relationship between Shane and Rick during their late teens and college years.
> 
>  _Life is Unknowable_ features an OC nurse who cares for Rick after the hospital massacre, but instead of dying before Rick wakes, she survives this time. But that is going to cause a major butterfly effect, because under medical supervision, Rick won't go haring off on a damned horse into walker-infested Atlanta. He doesn't get the magical resolution of randomly finding his family and has to accept and mourn they are likely gone forever.
> 
> Primary POVs: Rick and Alex (OC).  
> Pairings (as of 16 Sep): Rick/Alex.  
> Background Pairings: Otis/Patricia, Morgan/Jenny.  
> Group Members Planned (as of 16 Sep): Rick, Alex, Morgan, Jenny, Duane, Hershel, Maggie, Beth, Otis, Patricia, Jimmy.
> 
> This completely ignores any of the webisodes as canon. Larger scale plots like the Governor will probably be disregarded entirely. Characters from any season may be fair game. This will go pretty far afield on the AU stage, I think. As with all of my stories, the children actually featured in the show live or flashback will not die (with the possible exception of Abraham's children).
> 
> All three groups will eventually end up on the Georgia Coast near/on the Golden Isles around the time of Judith's birth. Eventually will include selected Kingdom-based characters (definitely Ezekiel, Jerry, Benjamin, Henry, and Dianne), some Alexandrians (likely Aaron, Eric, Denise, Olivia, and Spencer).


	2. Plain Old Alex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex discovers the hazards of being the only person alive while caring for a comatose patient.

**June 4, 2010**

Alex eyes the room across the hall from her patient with a sense of grudging satisfaction. She’s covered in putrid blood and not a small amount of gore from making trips to the basement pharmacy, central supply, and kitchens. The scrubs and lab coat she wears today are likely beyond all salvage, but they served their purpose in keeping the worst of it off her skin, as did the surgical mask and cap.

She realized right away she couldn’t risk daily trips down those dark stairs. Whatever damaged the power system took out the stairwell lighting, and whatever supposed genius of an architect designed the building didn’t put windows in them like two-thirds of modern hospitals seem to do nowadays. She is no fighter, and she thinks most of her success in taking down the lumbering dead so far is that they’re slow enough for her to think through attacking them.

With no elevators, she rigged a pulley system to haul laundry carts of supplies from the basement to the fourth floor. She would prefer to move her patient down to her own floor, which is remarkably free of the dead, but without the elevators, that’s an impossible task. Her shoulders scream from overuse in a manner they’re not used to. Alex has lifted patients and equipment, but never a steady repeat of work for hours.

Turning toward Rick’s room, she wants to check on him, but not like this. She can’t risk taking any infection into the room, and there’s no telling what horror lurks in the blood and flesh of these monsters. Instead, she reverses course to the former patient room she’s designated as her hazmat area. She strips off her gloves, N95 mask, and soiled clothing and drops them into the red hazmat bin she parked next to the doorway. Her footwear she leaves at the door in a tray of disinfectant, blessing the unknown colleague who left two pairs of nursing clogs in their locker that fit Alex.

The shower is frigid cold, with no warm water to be had from the basement boilers. She washes her hair and soaps down her skin as thoroughly as possible despite the cold, before reaching for the Hibiclens to finish off her shower. One good thing about the hospital is that she’s probably got several months worth of the antiseptic skin cleanser.

Her skin is turning blue by the time she’s able to haul herself out of the water, which is a feat considering her darker complexion. There’s no ridding this room of the stench of the dead, and the smell she’s endured all morning finally gets to her. She vomits almost uncontrollably, hating herself for the waste of food and water. This is a weakness she must conquer.

It’s not the first time she’s succumbed to nausea, so she flushes the toilet and eases herself to the sink, scrubbing her teeth with a disposable toothbrush. She tosses the used toothbrush into the trash that she’ll probably consider as much hazmat as the bin outside.

The delay in getting dressed at least saves her the need for a towel, and she’s always kept her hair short enough that air drying is not really a new version of normal for her. Grabbing scrubs from the pile on the bed, she covers her chilled skin, glad that the erratically working air conditioning at least means she’s starting to warm up. She slides her feet into her own sneakers for now, reminding herself that she really needs to leave socks and underwear down here.

At the door, she shoves the wheeled mop bucket before her, erasing any evidence of blood or bodily fluids between her scrub room and her patient’s room. She’ll hate herself if she goes to all this preparation only to kill the man by being lazy about cleanliness. Finally clean enough to feel willing to risk it, she scrubs her hands with sanitizer, slipping on a disposable gown, gloves, and mask. 

Rick Grimes still appears to simply be sleeping, if not for the IV, oxygen cannula, and catheter. 

“Deputy, I’m sure if you were awake, I would not be your new best friend,” she says softly, making notes in the notebook she’s turned into his chart. 

The machine ticks away gently, displaying vitals, but she takes his pulse anyway and works her way through a vitals check, explaining each step to him as if he were awake. His vitals stay calmer if she chatters, something noted in his chart by his nurses because they saw him respond to his work partner’s visits. The talkative deputy visited daily according to the chart notes.

Everything is in the same steady pattern it has been since she stabilized him nearly twenty-four hours ago. Whatever keeps him going is something she hopes continues. If he slips from the vegetative state back into a full coma, she isn’t sure she can guarantee a working ventilator to keep him breathing.

“I know I’m not your friend, or your family, deputy, but I would really appreciate it if you could wake up, and not just because alert patients are easier on for nursing care.” There’s no reaction like the nurses noted for his friend being present, and she sighs. “Guess it will take you a while to get used to me.”

Tugging back the bedding, she inspects his exposed skin, maneuvering the hospital gown as needed. He’ll need a sponge bath soon, but bathing him too often increases his risk of bed sores.

She checks the chux pad underneath his hips, finding it clean and dry. There are other protocols used for comatose patients and their bodily functions, but in checking central supply, she has probably years worth of absorbent chux pads and but only about two weeks worth of adult diapers and even less of rectal catheters. They don’t typically keep patients needing Deputy Grimes’s level of care long-term, so there’s no need for large quantities of those sorts of supplies. If the outbreak hadn’t happened, she suspects he would have been transferred to the local nursing home facility within a week.

The urinary catheter is both a risk and a necessity for the moment. She has so little testing she can manage that she definitely needs to monitor him closely for dehydration. Maybe once she’s got his routine down better she can give him time off the catheter and lower the risk of urinary tract infections. She should also bring one of the patient lifts down to get him into a wheelchair for part of each day. It’s not like there will be anyone to fuss that she’s doing the move without help.

Speaking to her infant patients seems so much easier. But that patter is easy, like it is for most people talking to small children. Translating to speak to a seemingly unaware adult feels awkward as hell. But he won’t respond to her voice if she doesn’t use it enough.

“I remember from the news that you have a wife and son. I wish I could remember their names, but maybe they’re in the chart somewhere. I’m hoping someone got them somewhere safe for you.” She moves his legs through barely remembered exercises from years ago rotations through adult patient wards. That’s another thing she needs to gather from other parts of the hospital - medical texts. She needs a crash course in areas she hasn’t considered for a while. Nurses at her level are rarely pulled off their usual floors to work overflow.

After she covers him back to the waist with the sheet and blanket, she moves to his arms. She eyes her blue latex gloves for a long moment before stripping them off and dropping them in the trash can near the door along with her mask. She washes her hands and returns to the arm exercises.

“Maybe I can find a happy medium in worrying about bringing some nasty superbug in here, and you only feeling gloved hands. Can’t imagine that would be a good thing, mentally.” For herself as well as him, she suspects. Without the mask muffling her speech, she doesn’t feel as odd when she speaks to him, either.

Once she’s placed his arms gently over the blanket, she does a mental review of the chart, remembering that the nurses usually allowed his partner to shave him when he visited. She checks the nightstand drawer and finds an electric razor someone obviously brought from home. She plugs the base in, since the electric in the room is currently holding, and checks the charge. It buzzes weakly.

“Guess we’ll have to take care of the beard growth later, deputy.” She takes the comb from the drawer and carefully runs it through the tangled curls. “Although I wish they brought you a battery powered razor instead. That is something I have plenty of, batteries, and who knows when the electricity will go poof on us.”

She has a few hours of sorting work to be done, so she decides she might as well try to rotate him for a little while. Rolling Rick onto his side isn’t as easy as it would be with a second set of hands, but he’s thankfully not a large man. Once she has a pillow tucked between his knees and one behind his back, she tugs his blankets back in place.

“Should have thought of that earlier and saved you all this yanking around on your blankets. I’m betting you’re starting to feel like a teenager who is late to get up for school and mom yanking on the covers.”

Alex adjusts the blinds since he’s facing the windows now. Even if his eyes aren’t open right now, light sensitivity is still possible, and she suspects he can open his eyes even if he’s not conscious. “I’ve got to go sort out our supplies and figure out how to block off the stairwells. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Back outside in the hallway, she takes a deep breath and goes to sort through the four laundry carts of supplies she hauled up. It takes a full two hours to get everything stacked and organized using the room’s existing shelving and furniture, but at least now she’ll be able to grab things as she needs them instead of hunting in a panic. It also allows her to inventory the prepared nutritional IV bags she found in the floor’s medication room, which makes her heart sink.

There’s a reason such things are prepared by a pharmacist and not a nurse. She only has two more days worth of the custom bags with his prescription label. After that time, she’ll have to see how easily she can place a nasogastric tube in an unconscious adult, something she’s never done before. In the end, she doesn’t think it can be worse than a preemie, so it is what it is.

Assessing the bags, she thinks about the populous supply of various feeding formulas down in the supply room, as well as back on the pediatric floor. “Well, Alex, guess it’s time to go on a scavenger hunt for our future liquid gold for Deputy Grimes, isn’t it?”

Telling herself that this is the one time no one would criticize her for talking to herself doesn’t really make it feel like a sane thing to do.

In the end, she decides she can wait to find the feeding formulas, because leaving the floor means another scrub down of her person when she returns. Today is not the day she wants to take an extra cold shower if she doesn’t have to. Instead, she goes to the room next to Rick’s and eyes it critically. She could - and should - probably sleep in the room with her patient, but she thinks she also needs a space away from him that’s all hers.

Dragging the laundry cart she designated as personal supplies to the doorway, she unpacks non-perishable food items onto the shelves. Until she figures out a way to heat up food, she’s limited on her own nutrition, and that could get dangerous for them both. It was the kitchen raid that actually got her covered in gore, but at least now the exterior door is blocked off, as are the doors to the cafeteria off the kitchens. She can filch from the pantries with impunity and less need to change her clothing next trip.

The electric was still running down there, whether from an outside source or the generators, so she could slip down to the kitchens anytime she needs to cook. The idea of being that far away from her patient is abhorrent though. Alex pauses and giggles somewhat unhinged as her memory prompts that there are microwaves on every damned floor in staff rooms. It is a quick trip to appropriate the one from this floor, pushing it to her personal room on an equipment cart, along with the coffee pot.

Exhaustion creeps in once she’s parked the equipment in her room, so she rummages for something to eat that doesn’t need cooking and a bottle of water. “Not anything that’ll pass the dietician’s standards,” she mutters, “but I’ll worry about that tomorrow.”

Chocolate is worth it, and she doubts calories are going to come back to haunt her anytime soon if she just happens to eat a two pack of Hostess cupcakes and a packet of strawberry poptarts, who cares? Tomorrow is time to get the rest of her own nutrition sorted. Grabbing blankets and a pillow from the room, she makes her way back to Rick’s room. 

The sight of the equipment cart with its hand sanitizer, gloves, and other protective items makes Alex pause. She debates the actual likelihood of carrying an infection in there as long as she keeps this portion of the hospital scrubbed clean and disinfected regularly. 

“Well, Deputy Grimes, here’s hoping your immune system isn’t the fragile sort. I don’t think living in protective gear is going to keep me sane and healthy in looking after you.”

Plus she’s addressing the patient from outside the room, where he doesn’t even benefit from her talking to herself. That’s probably not a good sign for either of them.

Foregoing the items on the cart, she pushes her way inside the room and drops her blankets and pillow on the reclining chair. There’s already a pillow on the little ledge behind it, along with folded sheets and blankets. Curious, she reaches for the pillow, catching the distinctive whiff of a nice male cologne. Curious that his partner seems to have slept here, and not his wife, she shrugs it off considering the man did have a kid. 

It’s likely his partner was single like herself and thus free to sleep in uncomfortable hospital chairs to allow the man’s wife to care for their child at home. The visitor pillow gives her an idea, though, and she sets it in the chair as she goes to check vitals once again. 

“I’m just going to tell you now that I’ve decided we’re going to be on a first name basis going forward. Since I have to get far more personal with you than probably even your wife ever did, it seems awful distant for you to only know me as Nurse Ybarra.” As she rolls him to his back, she watches for any sign of eye movement, which did happen occasionally his partner helped the nurse.

There’s nothing, so she sighs a little as she settles him onto his back for the next four hours. “That means you get to call me Alex, if you can understand that. I’ll call you Rick, since the news used that instead of Richard. Figure they got that much right in their reporting.”

Once she’s made the chart notes of his vitals, she goes to retrieve the pillow. It won’t hold the other man’s scent for long, but if they’ve been partners and friends long enough for the man to sleep here, it’s a familiar one to Rick Grimes. It’s probably the best thing she has access to remind the unaware man of his family.

“Here you go. You’re a few years too old for a regular teddy bear, but maybe this will help.” She tucks the pillow against the side rail, turning Rick’s head toward it on his own pillow. There’s the barest flutter of eye movement.

“Look at that. Well, I wish I had the real thing here, but you’ll have to settle for plain old Alex for now.” She runs a hand over his tousled curls, something she would normally do to a pediatric patient, not an adult one. She doubts he’ll mind, if he ever realizes she’s done it. People expect nurses to be touchy-feely, after all.

Alex sets the alarm on her watch for four hours ahead and makes up her makeshift bed. She tucks herself under a blanket, but can’t settle until she rolls on her side enough to see her patient. At least his expression is serene enough he could be sleeping. Long used to the sounds of the hospital equipment, she focuses on the just audible breaths of her patient and lulls herself to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Medical Notes:   
> Technically, Rick isn't fully comatose, although that may be the easiest way to refer to him. Fully comatose, he would need to be on a ventilator. He is in a vegetative state, so as Alex's chapters occur, there will be certain responses that are possible that do no mean he is waking up "early" for the timeline.
> 
> Additionally, like most entertainment, they skipped over the dire and gross issues of the level of care Rick needs. Those will at least be alluded to during Alex's solo chapters, as her musings about bodily functions and the unfortunately lack of care items for those. Patients in comas/vegetative states still have bladder and bowel function, typically, with all the clean up that could entail. Rick will probably have some difficulty accepting how much care this woman has given him once he wakes.
> 
> Eventually, time will speed up a bit, since none of us want to go through six weeks of Alex having to talk to herself. I still shudder when I remember watching _Cast Away_.


	3. Nurse Trainees

** June 20, 2010 **

Staring down at the parking lot she can see below the window, Alex makes a note in the journal she's been keeping. Checking the record, she confirms she's seen no movement aside from birds in a full week. The military equipment is sitting abandoned, and one of the things she's been targeting is the pallet of MREs she can see in one tent. 

Even with just one person, the kitchen supplies won't last forever. She's already eating weird meals as it is and raided other floors that were reasonably safe for anything salvageable in the staff rooms or vending machines. But she's an Army brat. MREs she knows, and that's a cornucopia out there.

There's also the idea of finding a weapon that isn't improvised medical equipment, but the food is more important. Making one last visual sweep of the parking lot, she closes the notebook and goes to change. The lightweight scrubs and clog style shoes she's wearing aren't sufficient for an outdoor raid, and they might give away where she's holed up.

Trial and error for the raids she's had to make within the hospital show her they can't bite through thicker clothing. After finding a box of Tyvek protective suits, she took one and layered on padding in the most vulnerable spots. It looks ridiculous, a lot like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but she can move freely enough. Covering it with a hooded windbreaker and jeans from a male coworker's locker tones down the feeling of being a cartoon.

Alex needs to hurry though, because overheating is an even greater risk even in the morning when the heat isn't as bad. Readying her IV pole weapon, she uses the flashlight to get down the stairs and carefully blocks the fire door from locking behind her. She can get back in at other points, but they aren't as safe as the stairwell. 

Blinking against the bright sunlight, she moves quickly and quietly to the abandoned military equipment. There are wrapped bodies decaying to bones all over what was once the rear parking lot, but she does her best to ignore them. They aren't walkers, and they aren't her patient, so she can't think about them.

Alex takes care before emerging into the fairly open camp. Some walkers go almost dormant without stimulation. It's an almost reptilian behavior that scares her more than the mobile noisy ones. But the eerie quiet of a world with no humans around is all she can hear.

Although she brought an improvised bag with her, she darts into a tent she can see cots inside. Since she hasn't seen any military since that horrible day at the hospital, she assumes they died or fled. It means her guess that there would be big Army issue duffels around is correct.

Emptying out the two she can find is bittersweet, scattering the personal effects of some person who signed up to serve their country on home soil. They thought it meant hurricanes, floods, or other natural disaster, not a rampant virus that turns even the weakest into cannibals. It might be the first time she's grateful her twin brother died in Afghanistan last year. At least Alvaro never saw this nightmare world.

"I hope you both fled those ugly orders and went home," she says softly, shouldering the empty duffels. After a moment of hesitation, she plucks the divers knife from the pile of possessions and shoves the sheathed knife in her waistband. Peering back out of the tent, she verifies it's still clear and then moves slowly and carefully to the tent with the MREs.

The box of ammo is a good find, shoved into the supply tent probably because the soldiers preferred rifles to handguns. It's heavy as hell, but she spreads the ammo itself into the bottom of each duffel. It's 9mm, which will fit the empty Glock she took off the late hospital security guard she found near the cafeteria one trip down.

It doesn't take long to load up both duffels with enough food to last her easily another month or more. If Rick hasn't woken by then, she'll need to make some decisions about the reality of his care. Scanning the tent, she spots a discarded Leatherman tool and puts it in her pocket. The hospital ban on personal blades in the building means she hasn't found the handy items in anyone's locker.

"You know, Alex, the smart thing is to dump these damned meals in the stairwell and come back for another load." Her own voice startles her. She tries to only speak in Rick's room, to limit her sense of going slowly crazy.

There's movement in the back of the tent that makes terror burn through her nerves like acid. She readies her makeshift spear, but nothing appears.

"Dammit. Now you're hallucinating."

The pitiful meow nearly makes her wet herself. It comes from above, though, so she scans upward to see a tattery furred cat on a stack of crates. At one point, the kitty was a beauty, and it still has gorgeous blue eyes in a gray masked face. It meows again.

"Oh, you poor baby. C'mere." Coaxing the cat doesn't bring it down the stack. It paces instead, disappearing and reappearing to meow again.

Alex drops her bags and sighs, testing the crates to see how sturdy they are. "You better be glad I've always planned on being a crazy cat lady, kitty."

It takes climbing to the second level of crates to see why the cat won't climb down. How she got clothing scraps up here to build a little nest, Alex doesn't know, but there are two tiny kittens huddled in a little cave made from the junction of two small crates.

"Oh, honey, they're beautiful," she tells the mama cat. Venturing a hand slowly toward the kittens, she keeps an eye on mama. The cat doesn't intervene, so Alex gently pets the silky fluffball nearest her. "I can't leave you here."

It's only pure luck and natural feline instinct to go for high places that's probably kept this beauty alive. She's too thin, probably from the pregnancy and being a pet turned loose in a dangerous world. Unzipping her windbreaker, Alex ignores the sweat starting to build up and unzips the Tyvek suit enough to expose her T-shirt. It's tucked in, so the babies won't end up in her pants accidentally.

"Gonna put the babies in my shirt so I can carry them safely, okay, mama?"

It gets her a meow, but she's allowed to tuck the first kitten into her top. The second kitten cries a little, but quietens when it rejoins its littermate. Alex zips back up and reaches for the cat. "C'mon, honey, we gotta get somewhere safe before the babies get too hot."

The cat allows herself to be crooked into Alex's arm like a baby doll, and the nurse slides back to the ground. After some debate, she ends up settling the mama cat inside the windbreaker and cinching the waist tight. She has to stay armed, or the rescue will end badly. There's no objections from the cat, so she gathers her duffels back up, keeping the straps away from her squishy passengers, and begins the slow creep toward the fire door.

It's the longest ten minutes of her life. Nothing disturbed the fire door, so she slips inside and lights her flashlight. Although she really does want to make another trip for food, for now, her outdoor adventures are done. Climbing to the fourth floor, she pets at the cats with her free hand.

Unzipping, she sets each cat into an empty laundry cart. "I don't know how smart you are about the dead, but there's a bunch way down the corridor. Let's keep you and the babies safe for now."

Stripping off her own outerwear, she's left in a tank top and running shorts. The air conditioning is becoming unreliable lately, so she decides not to don scrubs just yet. Pushing the cats down to Rick's room, she smiles at the adorable sight of the mama and kittens.

"I've got a patient to check on, so y'all gotta wait here. Maybe once you're clean, you can visit." Taking the meow as assent, she moves the gurney and sanitizes her hands before going inside.

The room doesn't look like a standard hospital room anymore. She scavenged fans from office areas to set up the best air movement she can manage. The window design doesn't let her truly open them, but between the fans, the three inch window opening, and judicious sponging, she keeps him cool when the air kicks off randomly.

Concern over the large scale systems failing is another alteration. The hospital's disaster plan required some portable oxygen concentrators, so she appropriated them for Rick. With no way to determine the lifespan of the hospital wide oxygen system, it reassures her to have his oxygen on something she can monitor.

He has good days now where he isn't always using the oxygen. Alex really hopes that's a positive sign.

"You're going to have to share my attention for a bit, Rick. I went on a food run and came back with cats. I'm sure there's a joke about women in that somewhere." As she checks his vitals, his eyes flutter, moving side to side, and his mouth works as if trying speech.

"Luckily for me, you can't make it just yet. Means you gotta wake up soon before I turn the place into a zoo. It's a mama and babies, so I figure you might understand bringing her inside with us."

She checks the growth on his chin, deciding another shave can wait a day or two until his next bath day. "Your hair is getting long. Not sure my stylist skills are up to dealing with curls in any decent fashion, but I may have to try."

Changing his position so he's on his left side a while, she eyes the get well cards. "I realized earlier that it's Father's Day today. I wish someone left a picture of your son here. You open your eyes enough to make me wonder if you might be able to see it, somewhere inside your head."

Dear Lord, the man has the bluest eyes she's ever seen on a person. Her mama was only half Latina, but even Alex's blue eyed grandfather didn't have eyes that bright. It still startles her when he opens them, even if there's no awareness behind them yet.

Alex squeezes his hand. "I'm going to go find something to eat that isn't cafeteria fare and play nurse for the kitties. I'll be back in an hour or so with your lunch." The nasogastric tube is helping her keep weight on him, but she hates the necessity since it bothers him.

Back out in the hallway, she peers down at her three new charges. The cat mewls a bit, lying on one side to nurse the kittens. Alex pushes the cart to her own room before going back to retrieve the knives and duffels.

She lines an old box with a sheet and puts it in the corner of her room and puts a wash basin lined with paper towels in the bathroom for lack of anything better as a litter box. Selecting a meatloaf MRE and activating it as a nostalgic nod to the holiday and her maternal grandfather's love of the dish, she retrieves her new roommates. The kittens are milk drunk and limp in sleep, but they seem healthy and reasonably clean.

Mama, on the other hand, is in dire need of grooming. "Alright, kitty, let's see if giving you a bath is going to end up with me needing stitches."

Examining her as she stands patiently in the water filled sink, Alex finds a tattered collar and disconnects it. "Figured you were a pet, but guess this is proof. Looks like your name is Blossom. That sound better than Kitty?"

The name spurs a meow from the cat, so Alex grins. It takes fifteen minutes of work with a pair of scissors, a comb that will now belong to Blossom, and a good scrub with soap and water to get the cat back to her once beautiful self.

"Well, gorgeous, I'm still not entirely sure what kind of kitty you are, but I wish you still had your person." When she lifts the cat in the towel, Blossom relaxes almost bonelessly in her arms. "I bet you are hungry."

The cat seems to reply, making Alex think she might be one of the talkative breeds. Setting her down on the towel next to the box with the kittens, she rummages through the various basins she's collected and finds two emesis basins. Filling one kidney shaped basin with water, she puts it out of the way near the bathroom door. Opening a can of tuna she's been avoiding because she hates the smell, she tips it into the other basin. Blossom is all but begging as she sets the food down.

"I know cats are hunters, but I'm betting finding all the mice and birds and little snakes is hard with babies on board."

Tonight, she'll sort through her stash to reserve anything meaty that she really won't miss for the mama cat. At least cats are carnivores, which simplifies feeding her. But it definitely means another trip to the MRE tent.

While mama is eating, she takes another look at the kittens. They're palm sized bits of white fluff, who look fuzzy enough that she thinks they'll take after Blossom. Who the sire is, who can tell now. They don't have any of the blue-gray point markings that their mother has.

"I wonder if you guys are like dalmations and get your color later?" she muses, stroking a finger along one tiny skull. "Gonna name you anyway."

A quick exam reveals one boy and one girl, as best as Alex can tell. It's been years since someone showed her the difference on ones this small. "At the risk of you both being boys and stuck with names like Princess or Bella, I'm dubbing you two Marshmallow and Snowball. Sound good to you, Blossom?"

Dedicated to licking the remaining traces of food from her bowl, Blossom obviously could care less what the babies are called. Alex takes a break to eat her MRE, deciding the meatloaf obviously isn't Grandma O'Conner's quality, but beggars can't be choosers. Saving the cocoa and tea for later, she drinks water instead, needing to replenish what she sweated out on her raid.

"I know handling small kittens is usually a no-no, but I'm going to borrow you guys." Blossom hasn't seemed upset at Alex interacting with the kittens so far. "Hey, Mama Blossom! Let's see how your kids do as nurse trainees, alright?"

Alex grins as the fluffy cat trots after her as she goes back to Rick's room, behavior more canine than feline. "We've got a special treat for the holiday. I can't produce your kiddo, but maybe these two will be a little cheery to visit."

She sits the kittens on the bed nearest Rick's belly. "Nurse trainees, this is Deputy Grimes, but we call him Rick these days. Maybe he'll like you two better than me."

Blossom makes a leap up to the bed, mewling softly and snuffling along the length of Rick's legs. Once she reaches Alex, she flops down and curls against Rick and yawns.

"Sleeping on the job? Good thing the charge nurse is long gone, eh?" 

That doesn't twinge Alex's emotions as much anymore, as she remembers carefully removing the bodies from the hall and turning a single patient room into their final resting place. The body she sort of recognized that first traumatic night by her overly bright, false blonde hair was a thirty year veteran of the surgical floor. She stayed, like Alex did, trying to get her patients to safety. Alex lived, and Valerie did not.

The kittens follow suit, curling up to snooze against their mama. Alex reaches for Rick's hand and guides it gently across Blossom's fur. The cat purrs, and maybe it's her imagination, but she thinks Rick's hand flexes a little. Either way, she keeps petting the cat until Blossom gets grumbly and then returns Rick's hand to the mattress above the cats.

Tired from her morning adventure, she dozes off against the mattress, with her head pillowed on her arms. It's nice to not be the only awake being on the hospital floor, finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kitties, as requested, Veronica. 😉
> 
> Blossom is a blue colorpoint ragdoll cat, sometimes called puppy-cats. The white kittens will develop point colors as they get older.
> 
> Ongoing author note: see my profile for an update schedule and story rotation.


	4. A World Turned Bad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick wakes to an unusual nurse, and Alex takes him on a tour of their hospital floor to prove her story about dead cannibals and military executions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: It happened off camera, but there are indications in this chapter that Alex was assaulted while Rick was still comatose. If you think the chapter will be hard to read, it's summarized in the end notes.

**July 4, 2010**

The scratchy drag of a cat’s tongue is the first sensation Rick can really focus on. It seems like he’s stuck in a nightmare, one he can’t quite wake from properly, until that sandpaper sensation against his cheek draws him to the surface. When his eyes finally focus, he knows he’s not dreaming up the cat, at least, because a fluffy kitty face is peering down at him.

The cat meows, swiping his nose this time.

“When did we get a cat?” he mumbles. He knows he’s been working a lot lately, but surely Lori wouldn’t get a cat without him. Besides, Carl’s been begging for a dog. If Lori was going to break down and get their son a pet, it would be one of Nita Swanson’s pedigreed Golden Retrievers, he knows.

Weakly, he reaches up and pets the fluffy head, which draws his attention to an IV taped carefully in his arm. More awareness creeps back in. Something’s taped to his face, but he resists the urge to jerk at it. Turning his head, he sees the IV setup along with the display for his vital signs. 

“Nurse?” Rick calls out. He can’t find the call button thing, and he thought they always looped those to the bed rail so they didn’t disappear into the bedding or fall on the floor. 

Then again, there’s a cat in his hospital room, and that oddity really draws his attention. It’s flat on his chest now, a purring warmth nudging at his hand where it stilled when he looked around the room. Petting the cat absently, he notices more things out of place. It's like one of those puzzles they would send home for Carl’s homework: find the things wrong with this picture.

The clock is stopped at 2:17. There are oscillating fans, turning sluggishly from two different spots in the room, barely combating the heat and humidity. The shelves that rarely have anything on them normally in a patient room are covered in enough medical supplies he fears for the tally of this hospital bill.

There is a blanket tossed haphazardly on the back of the reclining visitors chair, with a pillow in the seat of the chair. Whatever happened, he would guess that Lori or Shane camped out here. Probably Shane, because his partner would take on that task so Lori could be home with Carl. 

“Too bad you aren’t a dog, kitty. Then you could go fetch a nurse. Or just bark.”

The cat makes biscuits on his hospital gowned chest, claws pricking the skin just enough to sting. It stretches to its feet and leaps off the bed, disappearing through a door he realizes is propped open just enough for the cat to exit. That’s another oddity, because the door prop appears to be an upside down trash can the cat easily skitters over.

“Well, shit. I wonder if the damn cat can understand me?” Laughing at the silliness of that idea, he manages to touch his face, clumsy fingers identifying a nasal cannula and the source of the burn in his sinuses that feels like his throat is a little clogged. He’s never had one before, but Carl was in the NICU for a couple of nerve wracking days that help him identify the nasogastric tube.

Whatever happened, it’s serious as hell, because they don’t jab one of those down your nose for shits and giggles.

The bed controls don’t work, making him groan in frustration. Worse, he feels as weak as a newborn puppy when he tries to sit up. Pain in his ribs and chest also dissuades him of the attempt. His legs don’t respond well when he tries to move them. It spawns a panic at first, until he realizes they do move, just slowly.

Rick hears movement outside the door and turns his head to focus on that direction.

It’s another oddity, but this one makes his cop’s soul shudder. The petite woman dressed in damp scrubs looks like she’s been beat half to hell and back. Inexpertly cut short dark hair is all but dripping further wetness onto the blue scrub top.

“You’re awake?” she asks, looking torn between excited and apprehensive.

“I think so. Not sure. Feels a little like Alice in Wonderland. There was even a cat. Could be dreaming or hallucinating, I guess.” Although Rick doesn’t want to know why his brain would cook up a vision of a nurse looking like she came out on the losing end of a bout with a professional boxer.

Cool fingers grip his wrist, taking his pulse. This close, he realizes she’s got stitches through one eyebrow that look really fresh. What the hell is going on here?

“Not dreaming or hallucinating, unless I am too. The cat was really here. Just one cat? Full grown or kitten?”

“Adult, I think.” Rick watches as she scribbles in a notebook she takes from the bedside table before taking a stethoscope and continuing with taking his vitals despite them being displayed on the machine.

“That’s Blossom. There’s two kittens around here, too. The trash can is supposed to keep them out and let Blossom in, because she gets pissed if she can’t check on you. Thinks she’s a nurse.”

“What happened?” He isn’t sure if he’s asking about himself or her at this point. Honestly, he’ll settle for either explanation.

“To you? You were shot in the line of duty. Turned sideways to the gunman, so your vest didn’t protect you. Shattered multiple ribs, nicked a lung, three separate surgeries to fix everything. They put you in a medically induced coma, but you took a longer nap than planned.”

Somewhere in the darkness of his mind, Rick can pull up an image of Shane’s terrified face, begging him to hang on. “Where’s my family?”

The half smile she wore when she explained his injuries disappears. “I don’t know.”

“They haven’t been visiting? How long was I in a coma?” The panic claws at him, and he tries again to sit up. Jesus Christ, for Shane and Lori not to be here? Is it like one of those silly movies where someone sleeps for months or years? He could understand that they wouldn’t be able to constantly be at his side if that happened. Hell, he would hate it if they did.

“Six weeks, more or less. You were admitted on May 24th.” Her hand is gentle as she places it flat on his chest, easily keeping him lying down. “Don’t fight to get up. Your wound is mostly healed, but not all the way. I’ve been trying to keep up your physical therapy, but you’re half-starved on top of the usual muscle deterioration.”

He hyperventilates for a moment, finally coming back to himself to see dark eyes looking down at him. “Back with me, Rick?”

Her using his name boggles his brain a little. “What’s your name?” he asks, trying to focus on that instead of the frantic thoughts about six weeks in a hospital bed, away from his family.

“Alex.” She manages a sad smile, wincing a little as it pulls at the stitches in her eyebrow. “You slept through something out of the book of Revelations, I’m afraid.”

“What?” It’s confusing as hell.

“A virus the government told us was the flu went pandemic a few days after you were shot. People who got it, died cruel and fast, but it did something to their brain. They didn’t stay dead, and what got back up? It eats living people.”

“Are you sure you’re a nurse and not a patient from the psychiatric ward?” Rick asks, frowning. That would explain her weird appearance, but surely other personnel would have noticed someone as injured as she is wandering the halls.

She steps away from the bed and retrieves something from a shelf. Confused, he accepts the plastic identification card. Alejandra Ybarra, APRN. NICU/Pediatrics. In the picture, she even wears the same cheery scrubs he remembers nurses wearing from Carl’s stay in the NICU. Her hair was longer, and she certainly wasn’t injured, but she’s definitely a nurse.

“I don’t understand.”

“No one could, even when we watched it happening.” She rummages in a cabinet and comes back with a set of scrub pants. “I’ll just have to show you.”

Rick doesn’t fight it as she detaches the IV line from the catheter in his hand, capping it off. “Gotta leave that in, just in case.” Easing the nasal cannula off his face, she hooks it over something above his head. “This other part is going to be really gross more than painful,” she warns.

She was exactly correct that the sensation of removing that NG tube wasn’t exactly painful, but it does burn. The sensation reminds him of getting pool water down his nose. Dropping the slimy tubing into a paper towel, Alex disposes of it in a large trash can outside the door.

“Even if you can’t keep food down, you need a few days off the tube, really.” Her expression is sympathetic. “I volunteered to have one inserted during one of my clinicals. You’re probably going to feel raw where it was inserted for a bit, but let me know if it gets bad.”

More embarrassing is Alex tugging away the sheet across his legs and flipping his hospital gown back with a glance under. That’s when he realizes he’s bare ass naked under the gown. He can feel heat from an embarrassed flush chase across his face, but she just drops the gown and reaches out to arrange some pillows in an odd position on the bed.

“Alright. I’m going to remove your catheter before we get you out of the bed. When I lean in, wrap your arm around my shoulders. I’m going to move your legs off the bed, and you’ll need to be holding on to spin your torso with them.”

Apparently, there are worse experiences than her checking for whatever she was checking for under his gown, and he hopes to fucking God he never has to have a catheter ever again. Cooperating with the repositioning is still painful, but he ends up sitting upright, panting with the effort. “Jesus.”

It gets him a sympathetic look. “Try to stay upright, braced on your hands. I should have gotten the wheelchair first.”

Rick does as she asks, wobbly but upright as she brings the manual wheelchair to the bedside. 

“Can you lift your feet to help me get the pants on? I don’t have any men’s underwear, but I figure you would prefer some pants to sitting on a pad in the wheelchair.”

“Thank you,” he mutters, feeling helpless as she kneels, but he does manage to help her get his legs into the pants. Alex guides them to the edge of the bed before pausing. 

“It’ll be safer if you grip my shoulders and stand, letting me finish pulling them up.”

“I would prefer to pull up my own pants.” Dammit, he knows the woman is a nurse, but he’s never had to have someone pull up his damned pants for him. It’s frustrating that he knows she’s probably right, because if he falls, he would tumble them both to the floor. He probably outweighed her by at least fifty pounds when he was healthy. When he manages to get to his feet, he thinks the weight difference might not be that great anymore, but he’s tall enough she barely reaches his shoulder with the top of her head. Closing his eyes, he ignores the indignant, helpless feeling that curls in his gut as she gently eases the scrub pants over his hips and ties them in place.

“That’s good. Now walk with me, baby steps, so you turn to the wheelchair.” 

Once his ass contacts the chair’s surface, he breathes a sigh of relief and manages to get his feet on the footrests without her help. “Where are we going?”

“I’m going to show you the reality of what happened outside, best as I can without endangering you.” She pushes the chair toward the door, bringing him out into a hallway that looks more like a half abandoned building after a natural disaster than a functioning hospital. Lights flicker past the nurse’s desk, which is in complete darkness.

The hallway with his room seems dim but clean and tidy. Two other doors are partly open, and he can see stacks of supplies in the one directly across from his. Alex pushes a laundry cart from a row blocking the hallway, wheeling him through before returning it to the blockade.

“Keeps the kittens in our hall, for now, at least. Blossom can get out, but she doesn’t generally bother.”

“Where is everyone? What happened to the hospital?” She says there are dead people not staying dead, but even that doesn’t explain why the place looks like a warzone. They pass a spot near the elevators that looks like blood spatter, with bullet holes in the wall, pausing for her to unhook a weird contraption of bottles and cans. He thinks it might be a warning system of some kind.

Alex pauses by the arc of holes and reaches out to wave at them. “The military turned on the medical personnel at the end. They were supposed to be here to evacuate us. Instead, they took the babies and children and then slaughtered everyone else.”

“Why?” Did the damned government get taken over by some hostile outsider? 

“Because we were considered infected and too much of a risk to evacuate. Guess they thought the Guardsmen would balk at shooting babies and sick children.”

“How did we survive anything like that?” The impossibility spins in Rick’s brain, but the evidence is on the wall.

She starts pushing him again. “My boss locked me in a medication room and told me to hide. I don’t know why they didn’t shoot you. You were doing a pretty good imitation of being dead when I found you, so maybe they wanted to save ammo.”

At the end of the hall is a chained door, with Don’t Open Dead Inside spray painted on the doors. Alex reaches out and rattles the door. “Rise and shine, you dead bastards.”

Growls and groans begin, like something animalistic is trapped behind the doors. Gray, gnarled fingers thrust between the gaps of the door. There’s something decidedly wrong with those fingers, especially when he notices one is missing half of a digit, the remainder hanging on by a scrap of muscle and skin.

“What are they?” Rick asks, feeling like he might vomit from the sight and smell.

“Never got any real word out of the government what they’re called. They’re flesh eaters. Eat anything living or very recently dead. Guess you could call them vultures, maybe.” She turns the wheelchair around, pushing him back to the less horrific end of the hallway. “If they bite you and you get away, you die of a nasty fever and become one of them. Deep scratches get you, too.”

“And you’ve got a whole pack locked down the hall from us?” That’s terrifying as hell, because he isn’t capable of defending himself even now that he’s awake.

“Not my doing. Don’t know who chained up the door, but I don’t know how many there are, so I’m not taking a chance on trying to put them down.” Alex reengages her warning system as they pass the elevators and wheels him back to his room. “There’s no phone service. The electricity is erratic, but the emergency systems mostly work because they converted the generators to propane. Water is still good.”

“And the cops? What about them?” She isn’t making him get back in the bed, parking the wheelchair and going to strip away the bedding.

“Since June third, I’ve seen only one other living person, and it’s July fourth today. It’s a ghost town out there. Most people evacuated to Atlanta, I think. That’s where you were supposed to be airlifted to, and by the time the military turned on us here, I think half the town was evacuated to the refugee center there. There was one at Jacksonville down in Florida and another at Columbus, I think. Or was it Chattanooga?”

Alex tosses the sheets out in one of the laundry bins in the hall, efficiently remaking the bed even as she talks to him. Thinking over that information, he prays Shane abandoned duty to get Lori and Carl to Atlanta. He can’t imagine his partner not looking after Lori and Carl while he lay in a coma. As Alex leans to tuck a sheet, her scrub top rides up, revealing handprint bruises at her waistband.

It ends his train of thought about his family, cop instinct rearing up with all the outrage he always felt when he saw a woman hurt. The facial bruises and stitches were bad enough, but his thoughts were too scrambled to ask her about them before his tour.

“Alex?” he asks, feeling his voice settle into that calm tone that Shane sarcastically calls “Officer Friendly” and says ought to warn any bad guys to start pissing their pants. “You said you saw one other person. Did they hurt you?”

She freezes for a minute before finishing the sheet tuck, not reaching for the hiked up shirt. “He won’t be hurting anyone else, deputy. I made sure of that.”

Rick doesn’t need his law enforcement training to understand what she means, that monotone finality in those last five words. He ought to feel something about her admitting to killing someone. Although, to be honest, he does. It’s a righteous sort of triumph, that a victim got her own justice.

When she turns to look at him, her expression is somewhere between fierce and pleading. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not now. Maybe not ever. We’re both safe, and now that you’re awake, we’ll be even safer because we can leave this place as soon as you’re reliably mobile again.”

Forcing her to talk about it goes against both his training and his sense of rightness, so he nods slowly. “How long will that take?”

“A week, maybe. Getting solid food in you will help bring your strength back, and now you can help with your physical therapy.”

A week of not being able to get to his house, to see if Lori left any sign of where she went. If the world turned so bad that the military executed innocents, odds are high that his partner might have fallen on the job. Lori, for all the things they argue about lately, is a sensible woman. Even without Shane, she would get Carl to safety. He just has to concentrate on not being a liability to a woman who already spent weeks looking after a man she had no reason to save.

The kind of man that would put Alex at risk to get his answers faster isn’t the kind of man he wants to return to his family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the dark note of the chapter, I couldn't pass up Nurse Blossom after joking about it in earlier chapter comments.
> 
> If you skipped reading the chapter, Rick wakes to a lot of oddities (like a nurse cat) and Alex helps him orient to the world he's woken up in. She takes him on a tour of the hospital floor to see the bullet holes, blood spatter, and the caged dead at the other side. He realizes from fairly fresh injuries that she's been assaulted, but she tells him it isn't something she wants to talk about and that the man who caused them won't be hurting anyone else. As much as he wants to find his family, he can't ask her to leave faster than he's safely mobile and endanger herself again.
> 
> At some point, Alex will discuss what happened, but probably not for a while.


	5. Someone Else in Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leaving the hospital at last, Rick confirms his family evacuated, and the cats lure a family in need their way.

** July 10, 2010 **

When Rick manages to walk the entire hallway, from his wing to the door of the dead, without getting winded, Alex agrees they’ll leave the hospital the next day. That was last night, so Rick is awake before dawn, as anxious as a kid on Christmas morning. The unknown of his missing family is driving him slowly crazy, and while he understands the wait, he came near to asking Alex if she had tranquilizers in her medication stash.

The worst part of leaving the hospital is that Alex had to go on a raid of staff areas on other floors to find clothes for him. It’s one thing for him to wander the halls with no shoes. Out there with no telling what is going on? Being barefoot would be a horrific disadvantage. He couldn’t even accompany her on the locker raid for that same reason.

She’s curled up on the visitor’s chair, nothing but some strands of uneven dark hair showing above the blanket when Rick gets the light on. He hates to possibly wake her, but nature calls now that he’s awake and alert to it. When he asked her why she didn’t sleep in the other room now that he was awake and not needing round the clock observation, she just shook her head.

Rick doesn’t think he would want to be alone, either, after so long with just a comatose man and a trio of cats for company.

In the bathroom, he takes care of what’s necessary and eyes the shower. It’ll be cold, but who knows when they’ll be able to shower next? There might not be water pressure at his house, since it’s on a separate water system than the hospital. He pads out to the room and gets the stack of clothes Alex scrounged up for him, carrying them back and leaving them on the sink.

By the time he’s dressed, Alex is awake, and sorting things into one of her ever present laundry carts. “How are we going to get that down the stairs?” he asks, toweling his hair dry.

“Got a pulley system set up. It’ll be easier with a little help from you. My car started the last time I tried it a few weeks ago, so I’ll back it up to the closest fire exit. We can load up and then go find your house.”

“What about yours?” It’s something he’s wondered about, since she stayed with him rather than seeking out family. But it seemed insensitive to ask, because she might have lost them in the epidemic.

“I wouldn’t mind going by to pick up some clothes, and my pantry’s probably half full of things we can use.”

No mention of anyone to look for, once again, so he figures she must be like Shane, the last of her family. His side twinges as he sits to pull on socks and shoes, but nothing like that first day or even the second. He still feels weak, but sitting here isn’t going to really help. The fact that Alex considers the building a looting target makes sense, and he suspects that’s part of the story for her injuries the day he woke.

The worst of those are gone, although she still has the stitches in her eyebrow and some bruising is still evident in late stage yellowing on her skin. With a surgical cap from somewhere tied across her hair and her own borrowed clothing, it makes him sad and angry to realize she’s deliberately appearing masculine. He’s not entirely sure appearing to be a boy is a lot of help, if the world’s as far gone as she seems to think it is.

It’s not something he’s going to bring up though. Whatever makes her feel in control and safe is what works, for now. He does note something new at her waist. “Do you know how to use that?”

She glances down at the gun holstered at her hip, now that she’s wearing jeans and a belt. “Yeah. Army brat. Found it down in the Guard camp, but firing a gun is a last ditch thing. Might as well ring the dinner bell for anything dead in the vicinity with how loud it is, especially with no background noise anymore.”

That sounds reasonable and explains why she always relies on a knife or her wicked looking improvised spear made of a disassembled IV pole. The idea makes him consider his now unused IV system. It’s not the same as the one she has, he doesn’t think, but it doesn’t take him long to take it apart and heft the heavy metal. This one might serve as a bludgeon better than a spear, he thinks.

“Might take some of that medical tape and wrap the base,” Alex suggests, smiling approvingly at his new weapon. “That way your hand doesn’t get sweaty or blood slicked and lose grip.”

If that isn’t a testament to the life he’s about to lead, he doesn’t know what is. Improvising weaponry from medical supplies feels like one of those MacGyver episodes he watched as a kid.

“I want to leave some room in the Jeep, but I hate to leave anything behind,” Alex complains, eyeing the laundry cart. “Maybe I can leave things in the stairwell to retrieve if we get a chance to come back.”

“Sounds good to me,” Rick agrees. He finds himself helping her belay two carts down to the ground floor, before walking around the floor that’s been their home for the last few months to make sure nothing essential was left behind. When they reach the ground floor, he isn’t entirely sure he’s prepared for the outside world, despite the urgent need to confirm Lori and Carl’s whereabouts.

While he holds the fire exit door open, Alex darts off across a body strewn parking lot behind the hospital, her spear held ready. She climbs a hill at the far side of the parking lot and disappears out of sight toward the employee parking lot. Fear grips him as he waits, even with the sound of Blossom meowing softly from her snug spot nestled in one of the carts. Damned cat has an uncanny sense of when his emotions go off kilter.

Taking a deep breath, he hears the sound of a vehicle approaching the entrance. The rust red Jeep Cherokee is the model put out right before the actual SUV craze hit. He frowns when he realizes that Alex can’t bring it all the way to the door due to the sheet wrapped bodies.

Guess that makes the laundry carts even more important. He knows the other routes out of the hospital are too dangerous to attempt. As soon as Alex pops the back hatch, she makes her way back to the steps and snags one side of the cart.

“Sure you feel up to helping me carry it down? We can always rerig the pulley system.”

Rick shakes his head. He’s weak, yeah, but not that bad off. “Just try not to let it run me over.”

They get it to the bottom, with Alex handling more of the weight than his preinjury pride would have liked. For her size, the nurse is amazingly strong. It probably comes as part of the job, being that physically fit. 

At least he can load the back of the Jeep. Blossom moves easily to sit on the console between the front seats, seeming unconcerned that her two mischievous offspring are trapped in a pillowcase that gets tossed beside her. Rick doesn’t like the idea of the little cats in the pillowcase, considering that’s how assholes drown unwanted kittens and puppies. But he knows the safety precaution is necessary with no pet carrier and them needing to load the back.

Once the Jeep’s loaded up and they’re ready to leave, he lets them out of their cloth prison. Smoothing their soft fur, he enjoys their attention as Alex drives off.

“What’s your address?” she asks when she reaches the street.

He tells her, not sure if she actually lives in town to know where it is. Over half of the hospital personnel live out in the county or even in a neighboring county. She doesn’t ask directions, so she’s at least familiar enough with town. 

Looking out the window, he sees signs of the devastation she described. There aren’t crowds of the dead, like he half expected, but here and there, he can see a staggering imitation of a person turn toward the sound of the Jeep’s engine. The sight makes him shudder, and Alex stares resolutely at the road ahead. He figures she’s seen more than her fair share, considering she had to clear areas of the hospital to get to supplies.

Even though Rick was prepared, he thought, that no one would be home, the unlocked front door still gives him the willies. Alex follows him inside, but stays put just in the foyer as he goes from room to room, looking for any sign of Lori or Carl. There are clothes scattered here and there, and the signs of hurried packing. The pantry’s half full, mostly the odd things left behind, and when he checks the living room, he starts laughing hoarsely.

“What’s wrong?” Alex asks, shutting the front door and coming closer. 

Rick points at the empty picture hanging hooks on the wall. “World coming to an end and she even took the framed pictures down.” He pushes to look at a shelf and nods. “Albums are gone, too.”

It makes Alex laugh, too. “Well, at least that’s a sign she did it and not some random weirdo, right?”

She follows him when he goes back to the kitchen and peers out back. “Lori’s SUV is gone, and there’s Shane’s old truck. He came for them.”

The surge of gratitude and love for his partner nearly overwhelms him. He’s always known Shane is devoted to Carl, despite what the boy symbolizes in impossibility for them. The nagging fear that something might have happened to Shane before he got to Rick’s family fades at the sight of that stupid old clunker of a GMC that Shane’s had since high school.

“You don’t have a vehicle?” Alex asks, looking around the sunshine bright kitchen curiously. 

Rick shakes his head. “I always took the cruiser home, so we never bothered to have a second vehicle.” It meant being able to have a nicer family vehicle than they would have managed if they opted for two car payments instead of one. Rick sunk most of his inheritance into buying this house when his mother died a year after his father, selling off the old family place.

He was never comfortable there after the day his father found out about him and Shane. Pushing away that memory and hating it for rising up today, he does spare a brief thought that he could go burn the damn place down now, and no one can arrest him for it.

“Makes sense, I guess. Do you want to see if you can pack up your things? We’ve got enough daylight we could set out and make it to Atlanta easy.”

Following Alex’s common sense suggestion, he discovers that may be easier said than done. Every bag and suitcase is gone. That adds to his sense of relief, too, because Lori obviously had plenty of warning to prepare for leaving. They didn’t exit the house in a flurry of panic and confusion. Between Lori’s pragmatic planner nature and Shane’s law enforcement connections, they probably were better off than most.

He ends up solving the problem by running down to Shane’s truck, finding it unlocked. Sure enough, his partner’s gym bag is on the passenger floorboard, although his range bag is gone. Rick checks under the seat for the gun safe, relieved to see it’s missing, too. Back in the house, he tips Shane’s things out on the bed. Grateful that Shane was enough of an exercise junkie to have a decent sized bag, Rick packs what he can fit in the bag.

He seems to be lacking toiletries in the bathroom, so he wonders if Lori packed those by habit. Since he has plenty of the generic hospital issue items courtesy of Alex, he figures it’s not all that important. Zipping up the bag, he hesitates over the t-shirt among Shane’s things. He has a few department logoed shirts of his own, although in a smaller size. It’s a comfort he hasn’t allowed himself for years, but he picks up the shirt. Many would damn him for the memento of Shane instead of his wife, but who is around to judge anymore?

Shedding the borrowed t-shirt from the hospital, Rick dons Shane’s, shivering at the feel of the soft cloth. Putting aside the morass of conflicting feelings, he goes to the gun safe and can’t help smiling at the further evidence Lori didn’t leave the house on a whim. His Python is still there, because Lori hated trying to fire the thing and the sheer weight of it, but her little SIG Sauer P238 is gone, along with all the boxes of .380 ammunition.

Threading a belt through the holster, he packs the boxes of spare ammo in with his clothes, along with his badge and other police gear. His ID, he slides in his back pocket. Shane must have brought everything home after he was shot. When he reappears in the living room, Alex is roaming slowly around the room. He can’t tell if she’s bored or actually curious, but she offers him a small photo album, one of the types that fits in a purse.

“Found that on one of the shelves. Thought you might like them.”

Rick flips through the photos, smiling. “Yeah. Lori loves these things. Used to, she would have her show off pictures in one of these, and put them back in the album when newer pictures came along. Last year or two, she left them in the small albums.”

This one is about two years old, he thinks, based on Carl in the pictures. Sure enough, he spots a Little League picture, and Carl’s wearing the local pharmacy logoed shirt. The pharmacy sold that next year, and the new owner stopped sponsoring the team. It meant they went sponsorless except for the deputies taking up an unofficial collection, and the team moms holding a couple of bake sales and car washes.

He drops his bag in a chair to unzip it, just as Alex darts to the front door and yanks it open. 

“Hey kid! Don’t mess with the cats! You let them out, and they’ll get eaten!”

Rick leaves his bag to stand behind her. “Don’t recognize the kid,” he tells her quietly.

The boy is backing off slowly, and he looks like he might be a little younger than Carl. “I was just talking to them. Haven’t seen cats in a long time, ma’am.”

“Talking’s fine, honey. Talk to them all you like.” Alex relaxes, looking a little embarrassed when she turns to Rick. “I don’t know why I freaked. It’s locked, so it’s not like he could open the door.”

“Maybe because you haven’t seen a kid in weeks.” Rick frowns. Come to think of it, why the hell is a kid out here on his own? He steps out onto the porch, looking around for some wayward adult.

“Hey, kid? Where’s your mom and dad?”

Typical of most kids that age up to mischief, the kid looks guilty. “Dad’s looking through the brown brick house over there for supplies.” He points to a house three down and across. “Didn’t think anyone was living in any of these anymore. Haven’t seen anybody in months, seems like.”

“You live around here?” Rick asks, going down the steps so he doesn’t feel like he’s yelling at the kid. “What’s your name?”

“Duane.” He shrugs, pointing the same way as the first house. “We’re staying in a house around the corner. Was supposed to be going to Atlanta, but Mama got sick, and Daddy had to find a place to stay a while. Do you live here?”

“I do. I was away when everything happened and just got here today.” No sense trying to explain the nearly unbelievable story of the coma and hospital. “My name is Rick, and the lady is Alex.”

“Duane Jones! Where are you?”

Recognizing the sound of a frantically searching parent, Rick calls out. “He’s down here, mister. Was talking to our cats.”

The man that comes into view is tense, one hand hovering near a silver revolver tucked in his waistband. Rick can’t really blame him for the precaution, especially since the Python on his belt isn’t exactly hidden. He keeps his hands clear of the weapon, not wanting to alarm the father. A glance over his shoulder shows him that Alex has her gun in hand, though. The man can’t see her inside the foyer, though, so he concentrates on their visitors.

“Name’s Rick Grimes, mister. Your boy saw the Jeep and the cats and came to see if they were okay.” The grateful look the kid gives him for softening the effects of his curiosity makes him hide a smile. Damn, that’s so much like Carl when he would ease some of the trouble he got into with his mama sometimes.

“This your house?” The newcomer’s shoulders relax a little as he gets within arm’s reach of his kid without Rick reacting. 

“Yeah. Just told your son I was away when things happened. Came home to see if my family evacuated.”

“I’m Morgan Jones.” Arm around Duane’s shoulder, the man finally seems to relax all the way, sharp gaze on Rick’s t-shirt and the King County logo. “You a cop?”

“Yeah. Was a county deputy.” Rick pulls his ID out of his pocket, letting the man see it. Glancing back, he sees Alex ease her gun back in the holster before stepping out onto the porch. “Duane said your wife was sick? Alex is a nurse.”

The sight of the stern man’s face melting into undisguised relief makes Rick almost want to cry. He can’t imagine struggling along with something serious in a world without doctors and hospitals, and that kind of reaction? It’s serious. “There is certainly a God in heaven,” Morgan mutters. “Can you follow me?”

After Alex grabs his bag and he puts it in the Jeep, they follow the Jones men, Alex cruising slowly as Rick walks. He hopes sincerely that the other man is right about that deity. So far, it seems that his family is somewhere safe, and he just needs to be patient. After someone stayed and kept him alive, he figures they’ll understand if Rick takes the time to help out someone else in need.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon Note: While Shane is shown in a Jeep Wrangler in camp and later, it's not the same vehicle from the flashback scene of the Atlanta bombing. I opted for him having a different vehicle that he left behind since their cruiser was at the station in the pilot episode.
> 
> Jenny's alive and Alex can nurse her back to health, so next chapter, no widower Morgan. 😁
> 
> Word Count:  
> 1001843 
> 
> That includes Bunny Farm duplication, but since I posted the first chapter of RBM last November, I have over 1mil words posted here. 😳


	6. The New Normal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex determines that Jenny Jones's illness can be treated, and Rick offers for them to stay with the Jones family until Jenny is well enough to travel, too.

**July 10, 2010**

Rick resists the urge to pace mainly because he doesn't want to exhaust himself. The anxious need to get on the way to Atlanta and find his family wars with being trained for years to serve the community. Perhaps it would be easier if he didn't feel so useless, stationed on the front porch until Alex knows what is wrong with the sick woman.

Morgan steps back out onto the porch after leading Alex inside. "Not much to guard against out here right now, officer."

Rick sighs from where he's leaned against a porch post. "Was recovering a long time. Alex is a bit paranoid about me being exposed to illness right now."

It's something he tries to understand, because she could have left him and fled to safety. Being risky in his recovering state means disregarding the sacrifices she made to care for him. He doesn't have to like it, though.

"Recovering from what?" the older man asks, looking concerned.

"Got shot in the line of duty. Alex stayed behind to take care of me when I wasn't evacuated." His original intent not to elaborate changed when Alex grew cautious about him entering the house. He doesn’t want to scare this already tense man.

"Where are you headed?" Morgan's attention is more on the house than Rick, the question almost absent minded.

"Atlanta. I'm guessing my partner in the sheriff's department would have gotten my wife and son to the refugee center. Lots of signs of packing, with her SUV gone and his truck left here."

"I hope it was her that packed up then. Haven't seen anyone in the neighborhood since we arrived, but could have missed something. Considering the supplies I’ve gleaned from the houses myself..."

Rick doesn't need to reply because Alex comes to the door. She is smiling, though, so he hopes it is good news. "I can't tell absolutely, not without a blood test I can't run, but I think it's Hepatitis A. All her symptoms indicate it, even the jaundice she reports cleared up already."

"Hepatitis? Doesn't that destroy your liver?" Morgan sounds upset, and Rick can't blame him. Why is Alex smiling?

"There are several different hepatitis viruses, and yes, some can ruin liver function. But based on her symptoms and recovery so far, I think this is A. It is the one that you can recover from completely even without medical care. It's usually seen in breakouts around a restaurant worker having it and spreading it unintentionally."

"So what do we need to do?"

"I would like to run some IV fluids because she's dehydrated even with the steps you’ve been taking, and to help balance things out. You've already been doing most things I would advise by treating it like any other stomach virus or flu. Small meals, staying as hydrated as possible, and resting. I would estimate in another two weeks or so, she'll be mostly recovered."

"If it's contagious, why didn't Duane and I catch it?"

"Jenny says Duane was vaccinated against it, and since you served in the military, you got it, too." Alex looks at Rick. "You're vaccinated as well, according to the records I pulled. Probably because of work."

Rick assumes that would mean Alex is as well, since she doesn't seem concerned for herself. "Is she contagious?"

"Not since the first weeks after she got sick, as soon as the jaundice eased up. It's like a lot of viruses. You're most contagious before you start showing symptoms. Based on the timing, she was probably exposed right before the outbreak. Good news is she's probably better off than us, because they don't know if vaccines are lifelong yet, but having the infection is."

Morgan's smile is near blinding. "That is the best news I've heard since the dead started walking."

"Do you want me to go bring the Jeep around with your other supplies?" Rick knows that bag she brought is really more of an emergency kit. She had an IV bag in there, but if she needs more, that's in the Jeep.

"I know it's another day, Rick, but I can't just leave, and you shouldn't travel solo yet."

As much as he hates to hear it, he nods. "Can't imagine that an entire refugee center will disappear if we wait twenty-four hours."

Morgan follows him to bring the Jeep back, giving him a bit of a side eye. 

"You babysitting me, too?" Rick asks, amused.

"I figure if the lady is worried about you on your own, least I can do is make sure you don't trip over a walker and get eaten on the way for medical supplies to help my Jenny."

"Hang on a second." Rick unlocks the Jeep and captures the two kittens before they can escape. "Blossom, you need to teach your children some manners," he tells the big cat, who yawns from her perch on the console. Putting the rambunctious kittens in the back floorboard, he gets in the driver's seat and motions for Morgan to join him.

"Where did the cats come from?"

"Alex rescued them a few weeks ago on a supply run. They kept her company when I was too sick to be much of a companion. Blossom fancies herself either a nurse or my keeper. Can't figure out which."

Driving around the corner doesn't take long, but Rick eyes the cats. "You okay with them coming inside?"

Morgan laughs, capturing the little female kitten as she bails past her mother to pounce on him. She meows at him, her little dust gray mask making her blue eyes stand out. "I think you will be bringing better medicine than anything else with these. Jenny lost her elderly cat about seven months ago."

"Well, Miss Snowball will be happy to cheer her up." Rick scoops up Marshmallow, who shares his mother's d blue-gray color markings. Duane is at the Jeep, looking hopeful, so Rick gives him the little male with a caution to hang on carefully. That leaves him to fetch Blossom and his bag, since Alex is already rummaging for her supplies.

"Need any help?" he asks, slinging his bag's strap over his shoulder. Unlike the kittens, Blossom is not an escape risk. She purrs contentedly against his chest.

Alex flashes him a grateful smile. "Take this bag of food, will you? I don't want to use up their supplies when we have plenty."

He follows her back to the house, assessing the changes made to the structure to adapt it to the menace outside. Once they're inside, Morgan latches the door. The interior is dimly lit by an oil lamp in the foyer.

"Upstairs has some natural light, but it's too risky downstairs. Got water pressure still, but no electric or gas," the older man explains. "Backyard is secure enough for the cats to go out if they're quiet."

Rick sets Blossom on her feet and watches as she heads for the stairs faster than Alex does with her supplies. "See? Thinks she's a nurse."

It gains a smile from Duane and Morgan both, and Rick notices the boy has both kittens now, cuddled to his chest as he sits on the couch. His father looks toward the stairs, making Rick realize just how tired the man looks. It reminds him of Alex nearly a week ago, exhaustion from weeks of caring for a sick person layered under her injuries.

"Are you still wanting to take your family to Atlanta?" he asks, thinking of how Shane helped his family when he couldn't.

The idea that Morgan is worn out is proven when he blinks tiredly for a minute, obviously trying to think over Rick's words. "Gotta find somewhere with people. Not safe with just us."

"It isn't." Already knowing Alex's caretaker personality will lead her to agree, Rick turns to watch Duane happily chatting with the kittens. "How about we stay until your wife is ready to travel? Alex and I can head back to my place and not crowd in here."

Morgan chuckles, motioning at the large house. "Plenty of room here. Already secured, too."

Lodgings decided, Rick motions toward the couch. "Why don't you get some rest? I can keep an eye out. Or go upstairs with your wife?"

After thinking it over, Morgan smiles slowly. "I could do with a nap. That recliner ain't half bad for sleeping." He's asleep within minutes, snoring softly to his son's amusement.

Rick takes a seat near a window, keeping an eye on the deserted street as best he can without upsetting Morgan's security. Even more than the hospital and his own empty house, spending an hour watching a completely deserted street he used to drive down to get home emphasizes the changes.

Duane ventures over when the kittens fall asleep. "Have you killed a lot of walkers, Deputy Grimes?"

Rick shakes his head. "I was too sick to do much until recently. Alex took me out yesterday to show me how she does it, but I haven't killed a single one yet."

The boy sighs. "Dad showed me how, but I haven't tried yet. He says I shouldn't rush it."

"Sounds like good advice. Knowing how, that's important. It's like police training. We learn to use our gun and practice all the time at the range. But every cop I know hopes they never have to draw their gun on the job."

"I guess. Even though that's living people, these walkers were once people, right?"

Rick nods, missing Carl deeply at the moment in listening to the younger boy. “I’m sure most of them would be happy to be laid to rest, if they knew what’s happening to their bodies, but it doesn’t mean we can’t be respectful about it.”

He can already see the toll it takes on Alex, who admitted one night as they were falling asleep that she lost count of how many walkers she’s put down. Confined to the hospital, with its large population of the sickest people when things went down, he imagines that the number is a large one. If the thought makes his skin crawl, as a cop, Rick can’t begin to imagine what it does to someone trained to heal others.

Duane absorbs that for a minute before nodding. Marshmallow climbs up his pants leg, headbutting the boy for attention. “I heard you tell my dad y’all would wait for us before finding your family. How old is your son? Is he my age?”

“About the same age. He’ll be thirteen in October.”

“I turned eleven in March.” 

“Then you two are just about the same age. Be nice to have someone your age to hang around with again, won’t it?”

From the anticipation on the boy’s face, Rick knows Duane is lonely. He can’t imagine what it’s been like for the kid, with a sick mama and his dad probably distracted as hell between the world outside and caring for his wife. No wonder those kittens fascinate him.

Rick isn’t surprised when Jenny Jones comes downstairs to eat supper with them, as he imagines she wants to test out her freedom with her illness diagnosed at last. Her portion is about like his, bland food meant for easy digestion, and she still looks pretty sick, skin holding a grayish cast under a complexion normally about a shade darker than Alex’s. But from the way her family reacts, this is a vast improvement for her over the past weeks. She even manages to play a couple of rounds of cards with everyone before finally indicating she’s ready for bed. 

Since it’s after dark, they all head upstairs, with Morgan indicating a bedroom toward the rear of the house. “Just got the one extra, but I can move Duane into our room if y’all need…”

Alex shakes her head. “Been sleeping in the same room with him for weeks now. Not a problem.” She disappears down the hall, leaving Rick with Morgan.

“Those stitches in her brow,” the other man says softly, hand gripped around Rick’s biceps just a little painfully. “Didn’t think much of them, but I saw some other bruises when she was helping with dishes.”

It doesn’t take a mind reader for Rick to understand what Morgan’s asking. He had the same conversation dozens of times with women in his career as a deputy. “Wasn’t me. I still haven’t gotten the full story from her, because I’m respecting her wish not to talk about it. Happened the day I woke up, encountered a bastard raiding the hospital.”

“We gotta worry about him turning up around town?” Morgan asks, studying Rick closely. He must believe Rick, because he lets go of his arm.

Rick shakes his head. “Alex said he won’t be harming anyone else.” Another story he doesn’t have all the details for, but he’s glad she doesn’t have to face all the stress and embarrassment of a trial the old world would have required.

“Good.” The fierceness behind the word tells him that Morgan won’t judge Alex for it either. The man pauses outside his bedroom door, though, and looks back at Rick. “You best be telling the truth about that, Rick, because deputy or not, I won’t stand for her being hurt.”

There’s enough threat in Morgan’s voice to tell Rick it wouldn’t be a beating he would face, if Morgan decided he was a threat to Alex. “I understand.”

He’s glad to see that Alex has more than just him to rely on. Leaving their borrowed bedroom door ajar, he sees that Blossom is stretched across the foot of the bed, but the kittens are nowhere in sight. Considering Duane’s love of the little menaces, Rick suspects they’re down the hall with the boy.

Alex has switched out clothing to a faded old t-shirt over scrub pants, studying her eyebrow stitches in the mirror over the dresser in the room. “Want a lesson in removing stitches?” she asks him. “Looks healed enough to take them out, and if we wait too long, it’ll be a bitch to get them loose.”

“Sure.” It’s a small task to do for her, after she’s done so much for him, including care he really doesn’t want to think about having done. That doesn’t make him like the tiny flinches she has with each stitch tugged out, but she’s right that the wound is well underway toward being healed. “You’re going to have a scar.”

“Better that than the alternative, right?” she asks, giving him the faintest of smiles. “Not like I was ever interested in beauty contests even before the world turned upside down.”

Rick thinks that that was a lack of interest, not a lack of the appearance needed for such contests. She’s pretty, although not in the more delicately featured way he’s used to. But he also suspects the disregard for feminine fussing predates being stuck in a hospital caring for a comatose man. Not that he’s commenting on any of it. He did learn a few things about discretion in thirteen years of marriage.

She moves away, yawning and stretching. “Get some sleep. I heard you and Morgan talking about watch, but I’m taking half your shift. I don’t need the rest like you and Jenny do.”

Although his first instinct is to argue, he catches sight of that Beretta on the nightstand and nods instead. Alex has been looking after herself for a long time now. If she wants to be part of defending the group, who is he to argue with it? Falling asleep is harder for him than Alex, though, because she tucks herself around a pillow, rolls to face away from his side of the bed, and drops off nearly instantly.

It’s been a long time since he slept next to anyone but Lori, and this definitely doesn’t compare to sharing with Shane either. Having a crazy night owl roommate made for a good cover for a long time to crash with Shane in his dorm room, since his suitemates never seemed to question the quiet addition to their number. Eventually, the new normal of hearing Alex asleep in the same room overrides the oddity of her sleeping so close, and Rick drifts off.

As he does, he wonders just how hard it will be to adjust back to his family, and to make sure that Alex doesn’t end up alone after all she’s done for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jenny Jones's name makes me giggle because there was a talk show host in that nineties by that name.
> 
> Rick is managing a bit of codependence on Alex, methinks... And if you need a visual for Alex, I keep picturing Tessa Thompson when I think about what she looks like.
> 
> Playing loosely with dorm room issues in Rick's last paragraphs. The nineties were when colleges started shifting to not having everyone crammed into tiny rooms with two single/twin beds, especially for athletes. My freshman year, the college actually had rented off campus places for a good chunk of the football team, because they overhauled the dorm to give the male athletes private rooms with full-sized beds more suited to their size and height. They still had suitemates, but not actual roommates. My cousin's kid posted pictures of the regular freshman dorm last year, and I see that those students still get roommates all crammed together though, if they stay in the "traditional" residence halls and save $1,000 in board fees per year.


	7. Loss of Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick's small group finally travels to Atlanta, only to find a devastating sight.

** July 15, 2010 **

Leaving King County takes a little longer than expected because Rick and Morgan settle into a friendship that revolves around scavenging all the supplies they can before venturing out on the road. Alex isn't going to complain, because she's overjoyed by not having to deliver a lecture that expecting everything to be easy at the refugee center is crazy.

Even if the military hadn't mowed down her coworkers and patients a month ago, she's seen one too many FEMA managed disaster assistance go awry. Better to be over prepared than under. It's a legacy of being raised by a career Army father. In his twenty-four years in the military, Mateo Ybarra dragged his children across fifteen different bases. She's not sure how many preceded his having children. 

All of the moves were accompanied by enough supplies to probably keep a small town running. Her mother took six months to sort through everything and downsize when she moved into an apartment so someone else was responsible for care and maintenance with her son following his father's migratory Army career and her daughter on the other side of the country. But some old habits die hard, and Alex is facing those at the moment.

"You have a two bedroom townhouse, just so you could use the second one for storage?" Rick asks, looking curiously around the place. "Why not just rent a storage unit?"

"Most aren't climate controlled, and then other people can access your stuff a lot easier if they want to steal." Alex slides another heavy duty storage tote toward him after flipping open the lid flaps to verify the contents match the label. "And the room isn't just storage."

It's true, because there's actually a computer desk and chair in here, along with every nursing textbook she ever purchased. And technically, the closet in here is her off season clothes. But with so much of her life usually spent in scrubs, it's not an extensive wardrobe. The first thing she did here was change into her own clothes and sturdy boots before packing most of the closet because it's sturdier wear. It won't be summer forever.

"Need me to help with any of the sorting?" Rick asks, returning from taking the box downstairs to sit near the townhouse door.

Alex shakes her head. Some of the boxes are too personal to share. It was always her joy to store her twin's older belongings instead of trusting them to military storage. After he died, it at least meant none of his keepsakes were lost. Maybe now, because of the world ending, she can't keep it all. But at least she knows where it is.

"Are you okay?" Rick asks, sounding concerned. 

Closing the storage bin after taking out a single olive green t-shirt, Alex starts to give the automatic yes she always gives, but he looks so genuinely concerned. "Memory boxes," she says, parting the one in front of her. "My late brother's things. Safer left here."

"What happened?"

"He was in the Army and died in Afghanistan last year." Getting to her feet, she unlocks the gun safe in the corner and starts stacking boxes of ammo on the desk. She takes Alvaro's guns plus her own to the range periodically to keep them in good shape, following her dad's rules to always have at least two boxes of ammo per weapon.

Rick's eyes widen. "I knew you were comfortable with a gun, but…" He trails off and chuckles.

"I don't seem the type to own three handguns and two hunting rifles?" Alex smiles ruefully. "To be honest, I haven't hunted since my father died. Mom didn't want to keep any of his guns, so I kept the ones Alvaro and I liked best and sold the rest. Might as well expand our mini arsenal."

They aren't sure if the camp will even take new people, but if Rick can find his family, they want to be prepared to find somewhere safer than the center of town. That's why both SUVs have U-haul trailers hooked up that they are filling slowly with scavenged supplies. They'll be useful at the center, too, but Alex is too much of a realist to not prepare.

Rick loads all but one of the guns into a sports bag she digs out of the closet. Alex switches out her borrowed Beretta for the Smith and Wesson her father bought her when she left for college. It feels more appropriate, and she sets the scavenged gun into the bag before Rick zips it up. The old t-shirt she adds to a backpack with the most useful nursing textbooks.

"I'll put it in the back of the Jeep," he tells her. "Keep it separate from the regular supplies and with the ones from the station."

That was a lovely field trip yesterday. Hot showers and clearing anything remotely useful out of the station. Rick's first walker, too, a staggering deputy that turned Rick somber for the rest of the day after using his makeshift spear for the first time. They have other weaponry now, but Alex still favors the well used IV pole she adapted and used for months.

After one last time checking the upstairs, she ventures downstairs and snags a photo album to tuck into the backpack just as Rick returns inside. There are others, but this one is the irreplaceable one. "I think we're good. Hopefully, everything else will stay put until they get a handle on things."

It's a more optimistic statement than she would normally make. With the vast losses of population, whatever comes next won't be widespread rural communities nestled around larger cities, she thinks. Refugee centers are probably going to be the centerpoint of society for years. Nevertheless, she locks her door securely before venturing to the Jeep. 

Morgan, Jenny, and Duane are loaded up in their Land Rover already, but he starts the engine when he sees Alex heading for the driver's seat. As she leads the way to the highway that will take them north out of King County, she glances at Rick, where he has Blossom on his lap. The kittens were more than happy to ride with Duane.

"It's two hours outside of peak traffic to the high school they designated for the center," she tells him. "Not sure what the roads into the city will be like."

"You are familiar with the area?"

She nods, trying to ignore the eerily empty road. "North side of the city. I did my master's at Emory."

"And ended up in King County." Rick shoots her a grateful look for the distraction of conversation.

"More baby care, less patching them back together after they've gone through something tragic." Her rotation through the emergency room at Grady Memorial in Atlanta is something she promised herself to never repeat. "NICU is a tough job, heartbreaking sometimes, but it's more often Mother Nature's fault than mankind's."

"My son was in NICU for a few days. Born a few weeks early and had some feeding issues at first."

"Those are the easier ones. It's always a triumph to send them home." That's the part of her job that she'll miss the most, caring for the tiniest and fiercest survivors. "Probably before my time there, if I guess his age to be over ten."

"He'll be thirteen in October."

"I've been here for four years, so definitely before my time. Spent a year working the floor and the last three as supervisor." Alex smirks at him. "You're doing the math, aren't you? Trying to figure out my age without asking."

The joy of his pale complexion is that she can tell he's blushing, just a little. Rick ducks his head, concentrating on the cat. "Pretty sure that's one of those questions no man is supposed to ask."

Laughing, Alex edges around a wreck. "I'm exactly six months older than you are. I turned thirty-six in May. Could have used a nicer birthday present than sleeping in a staff room, but that's life working in a hospital sometimes." Thinking about it, she thinks she only went home once that last week of May, and that was to do laundry and catch a four hour nap.

"Sounds like working for the sheriff's department. I think I missed more birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays than I got to attend. Didn't make me a hero in my wife's eyes."

"There is a reason for the high divorce rate among certain professions." She can see the question in his eyes and shrugs. "Moving to King County wasn't all about leaving the city. Sometimes it's about starting over completely, a move like that."

"The girls in the photos…" Rick hesitates, his concern evident that the question was a hard one when he doesn't finish. She knows that on the surface, the two blonde children look nothing like her, although her own hodgepodge of genetics wouldn't exclude the possiblity of blonde children.

"My stepdaughters. The lovely part of being a stepparent is that when the divorce comes, there's not a shred of legal ground to even get visitation. Doesn't matter how involved you've been in their lives, just fucking biology." Alex still stands by her insistence that Lizzie get diagnosed and receive the mental health care she needed, but the strife it sparked in between her ex and his ex was the beginning of the end for her own marriage. She will be the wicked witch to her dying day for Lizzie to be able to live a normal life.

"Where were they, when everything went bad?" She has Rick's full attention now, she can tell as he asks that question. Those kind eyes are intent on her, and she thinks she understands how he worked as a cop. Her passenger was definitely the earnest Andy Griffith type of cop.

"Living up around Ellijay. Their father got a job offer up that way after we divorced. Remarried their mother, all happily ever after." There's a bitter note she still can't chase out of her voice after nearly five years. Shoving away the ugly feeling, she focuses on the better details. "Lizzie's twelve now, and Mika's tenth birthday was in June."

"How long were you married?" 

"Just over four years. Mika was still a baby when we married. Probably not very smart of me, marrying a man with an infant and a toddler, but I was more of an optimist then. Might have been easier, keeping contact with the girls, if we had a child together, but it didn't happen."

Alex doesn't know if the girls are alive or dead, because she didn't even have a phone number to call and warn Ryan about the seriousness of the virus. The way the world is now, she probably will never know. The joy of no answer is that she can imagine them happy and healthy somewhere safe. As much as she still has her faith, she expects no such miracle as finding them in Atlanta at the Refugee Center.

Rick studies the scenery outside the window long enough that she thinks he's going completely silent. Something is obviously on his mind, but he can't seem to settle on saying anything. Just when she figures on him staying quiet, he speaks. "You liked King County?"

Letting him angle the subject that way, she shrugs. "It's a nice enough place. No one knew enough to have misconceptions about me, which was nice." Born to a Latino father and a biracial mother, even the melting pot of Army bases didn't always let her and Alvaro fit in. They were never quite enough of any one thing to suit those who needed to stuff them in categories, defying even the easier half-and-half ones. At least here, people seemed to just hear her name and not think further on it.

"I guess the hospital folks came from enough other places not to flip all the curiosity switches that would happen if you worked at the cafe or city hall."

They spend the rest of the trip exchanging small talk about the town and surrounding county. With Rick's family going back at least six generations, he knows a lot more trivia about it than she does, although he seems entertained by her outsider's perspective.

Circling around the city is tricky, requiring a couple of detours off the interstate until they reach the right neighborhood. It also shows them a horror story for the city. "Who the hell bombs the city they told people to evacuate to?" Rick mutters.

Alex cracks the window and sniffs to confirm her suspicion, the smell making her stomach churn. "Wasn't plain bombing, Rick. They dropped napalm."

The fucking military set Atlanta on fire, horrifically so, and she knows without a doubt there is not going to be good news at the end of this day. Napalm damage, this close to where they're headed? That's not done in an area you want to salvage.

Her palms begin to sweat as the creep closer to the right place. Rubble and burned out cars make it difficult, especially with their trailers. The walkers aren't populous here, but there are enough to make Alex's skin crawl. If the dead are walking the city streets, they botched the napalm job.

When they have to stop at a field of mangled cars near what was once the high school stadium parking lot, Alex slides her hand in her pocket for her rosary. Even then, she finds herself at a loss of what prayer suits the scene before her. Nothing comes to mind for several heartbeats until the Lord's Prayer comes softly to her lips.

Before them, clearly identified by a massive banner that somehow survived the military onslaught on a building nearby, are the charred and broken remains of the Atlanta Refugee Center. Bodies, burned beyond recognition, are scattered around the edges of the burned areas, and there's no way to know whether they were the living or undead. Here and there, evidence of the massive military run encampment survived the napalm and the elements: scraps of a military grade tent, a half melted portapotty, the cargo bed of a military truck whose cab took the brunt of something big. There are none of the lumbering, mobile dead, and she wonders if this place offends even their senses.

When she reaches the end of the prayer, Rick lets out a choked sob, body shaking. All the hope that sustained him after finding those photos gone drains out of him in a flood of soul wrenching grief. Alex glances over to see Jenny and Morgan's concerned faces where they've parked beside them. There's nothing to be done but reach across the console and slip her hand into his. He squeezes tightly before turning enough to let her hug him. Blossom shoves her bulk into Rick's belly, purring as if she can magically fix what ails him.

They'll figure out what's next later. For now? Her job is to be right here and help him hold on in a world that just took everything from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wavered on which set of kiddos in Michonne's group were Alex's and finally settled on Lizzie and Mika, since they don't get Carol this time. Plus having a living ex is always fun, right? 😉. They'll make it to Hershel's next.
> 
> The other two stories will flip order this week, so expect Michonne's story before Lori's.


	8. One Day at a Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick tries to come to terms with the seeming death of his family through his friendship with Alex.

** July - September, 2010 **

Rick doesn't remember much of the time between crying himself to sleep in the Jeep and arriving in Ellijay. It had been the only idea anyone had, to go looking for Alex's family, too. With his hopes crushed that his family survived the hellhole the world devolved into while he was unconscious, he doesn't object when he wakes miles from that horrific place.

Alex stays so stock still in the driver's seat after explaining that he finally realizes she can't bring herself to get out of the car. He takes her hand, feeling the aching hole left behind that chants Carl-Lori-Shane, and does his best to return the comfort she gave him. He needed to know, and so does she.

"Maybe they went somewhere other than Atlanta," Rick suggests. "Morgan said there were regional centers. Chattanooga would be equally close, right?"

Alex nods, but sighs softly. "I'm not sure any of those places were safe."

He agrees with her. With the evidence of military massacring patients and staff in King County, and now the napalming of a refugee center, he wouldn't consider any government run location safe. Too much can go wrong in a crowded area of people, even before the virus.

Inside the modest little house, there are at least no walkers. The signs of hasty packing are there, but not as thorough on the photos as Rick's home. He finds himself picking up one of the framed photos of the much older girls, some professional photographer's pose. "You didn't take your framed photos."

Alex pauses in going through a desk in the living room. Morgan took his family to the fenced backyard to let Duane and the cats spend some time outside and let Alex search in peace. "I have copies of all of my framed photos in my album. They aren't the eight by tens, but I don't need them display size to remember."

She comes to look at the photo. "I always hated artificial shots like these. Stuck in a studio. It's so sterile."

Thinking on all the professional quality framed photos she had of the children, he remembers they were all set up to appear candids. Placing the frame back on the mantel, he nods in understanding, noticing the crumpled printout in her hand and taking it gently. It's printed directions to the nightmare place they left.

Alex's smile is brittle, a glimmer of tears appearing in her eyes. "Ryan always printed out directions only to forget them when we left. I always put a second set in my purse."

She doesn't resist when he draws her close for a hug, resting her head against his shoulder and reminding him again of just how petite she his. Her tears don't last long, and he thinks that maybe she's already mourned her girls before she ever had confirmation. She never held the hope he did that made reality such a gutwrenching blow.

Eventually, she moves efficiently through the house, collecting mementos from her girls' rooms and dismantling all the framed photos of them, even the stiffly professional ones, and adding them to a padded envelope she found. Some images of them are better than none, he imagines. Shouldering a backpack, she eyes the kitchen with distaste, and he's reminded that her ex remarried his first wife. The frilly, overdone red and white strawberry motif of the room couldn't be more opposite to Alex's calm space in her old apartment if it tried.

"I know we should empty the pantry, but…" she trails off weakly.

"Plenty of supplies elsewhere." That decided, they call for Morgan and the others and figure out what to do next.

Next ends up being clearing out a local bed and breakfast. No one wants to sleep in some lost family's rooms tonight. Ellijay is eerily deserted compared to Rick's hometown, but it's also less than half the size. It has more hotels and motels simply because of tourism and the proximity to mountains and national forest. Normally, it would be teeming with tourists. Instead, they pause and put down less than a dozen roamers between Ryan's house and the bed and breakfast they choose from tourist brochures.

They may not stay there long term, but the six rental bedroom building gives them space to spread out. This seems to be a selling point for both women, and the three males are wise enough not to argue. Clearing the building isn't the chore it seems, other than inspecting room after room of the sort of room decor designed to draw women to wine country vacations. They do find three walkers. All three are dragged next door after being laid to rest.

There's no electricity, but Morgan tinkers with the inn's generator and gets it running. It's not an outside unit, thanks to the commercial nature of the place, so at least it can't be heard to attract walkers. The other man predicts the water supply should hold out a considerable time, with no one else pulling down the pressure on the system from the town's huge water tower. As long as they are conservative, the propane in the tank is sufficient for a while to run the generator for essentials.

Bringing in their immediately needed things, Rick isn't surprised when Alex follows him into the room he picks for being nearest the exit to the vehicles. There are six guest rooms, but he finds the idea of lying alone in the dark as abhorrent as she must.

That night, Alex cries softly, curled away from him on her side, and he's glad they didn't go far from each other. Sliding in behind her, he puts an arm around her and links his fingers in hers. It's too warm for the shared body heat, but neither of them protest as they both deal with their tears. The breeze possible thanks to open windows and the private screened in porch for the once $250 a night room at least makes it better than anywhere else they've slept.

He doesn't sleep much at all that first night, and while he lies there awake, he wonders if this quiet solitude is how Alex felt for weeks at the hospital. Her even breathing after she falls into exhausted sleep feels like a lifeline anchoring him in the yawning maw of grief he's plunged into. At least he's reasonably guaranteed she'll wake come morning. She never had that as a promise for each new day. 

The next day, Alex makes no mention of it, not even after a long day of gleaning what supplies they can in the nebulous plan of staying here for a while. Fresh from the shower, she simply climbs into her side of the king sized bed, as set by their stay in Morgan's temporary home in King County. But instead of the respectful distance they maintained prior to last night, he gently tugs her close, needing the contact. She must as well, because she snuggles into his chest and relaxes. It takes him a minute to realize she's tapping out his heartbeat on his chest as she dozes off. The kittens have abandoned them for cheerful young Duane, but Blossom is their ever faithful sentry.

After that, each night is spent clinging to each other, alternating who seems to need the most comfort. Part of Rick wonders what the point of going on without his son or wife or best friend. It's balanced by the part that thinks Alex could have left him behind and didn't. Perhaps it makes them family in a unique way, this shared grief. Neither of them are alone.

After three nights of quiet tears, the talking starts, spanning an hour or two in the dark, her head resting over his heart. Memories of Carl, Lizzie, and Mika are the first ones. Sharing about children is so much easier, because there are fewer bad memories attached, he thinks. Admitting he'd been expecting Lori to ask for a divorce for months and couldn't find the energy to change anything to prevent it? That one nearly guts him to say.

He suspects had his late wife managed it, expected or not, it still would have felt exactly like Alex's retelling of coming home after a double shift in the emergency room to find an empty house and divorce papers. Knowing something is coming doesn't change the sense of loss and failure as a human being. At least Lori wouldn't have stolen Carl away without any warning. If her ex-husband wasn't dead, he knows he would want to punch the cowardly asshole.

Jenny and Morgan leave them be about how their nights spent. The other woman is still weak, so they alternate someone staying with her and Duane while the other two gather supplies. After a while, they stop going out every day, because they have plenty for probably months for the five humans and three cats. Every third day for checking for walkers or any changes in town is plenty.

Alex shifts to giving medical lessons then. Rick never wanted to learn to give someone an IV or do stitches, but he recognizes the necessity. If Alex is ever sick or hurt, he wants to be able to help her more than just his first aid classes from work.

Although the inn catered to more of a wine country tourist type, they find elegant gaming sets unlike the plastic and cardboard items Rick's used to. Morgan teaches them chess, but it turns out Alex is the strategist, not him. When the two meet up for one of their intensely quiet matches, Rick joins Jenny and Duane for card games instead. Each day that goes by makes it less painful to see the boy so alive and happy, until Rick can finally take joy in being one of the ones responsible for keeping him that way.

They spend time on their private little porch, too. Rick takes up whittling again, a hobby he hasn't done since his grandfather died when he was a kid. The first few animals are clumsy and awkward, but he finds them saved from the trash bin and lined along the dresser that holds Alex's clothes. After that, he places each new one into her little zoo himself.

Alex knits, seeming to have a hard time keeping her hands still without something to occupy them. It reminds him so much of Shane's fidgeting in their squad car that one day, that whole tale spills out. He's never shared it, not once, because it seemed too dangerous to ever tell. 

Lori would have kept the secret, but it would have hurt her too much. Even at his most frustrated, he never wanted her to learn the origins of why he first started dating her. The fact that she was his second choice, as much as he came to love her in her own right, is something that tainted their marriage enough as it was. He was never able to be the husband he should've been.

Alex is quiet, even her busy needles still for once, when he finishes. Just when he starts getting worried, she smiles ruefully. "I did wonder a bit, when you responded to the remnants of his cologne on that pillow the way you did."

And that's as complicated as it gets for her, knowing his first love was male and by his side even more than his wife. He does wonder, late that night, if she sees the parallels she has with Lori in her own life, losing her husband back to his first love. At least he spared Lori that, right?

After that, he's not as careful in how he speaks of Shane. He even starts telling Duane stories about Carl's misadventures. Jenny laughs and tells him to stop giving the boy ideas. He counters by taking the boy out and teaching him to fish. God, it fucking hurts, to look over and not see Carl. But his son would have been such friends with this boy. He won't begrudge his father for keeping his memory alive this way.

Two months after he first woke, Alex doesn't curl up against him. Before he can ask what's wrong, she starts to speak into the darkened room. The story she promised about her injuries that day comes out in fits and spurts, and he's terrified to reach out when she's talking about what a man did to her. But then he remembers she's never shied away from comforting contact with him, even when those bruises still colored her skin. When his hand seeks hers, she grips his so hard the bones creak.

"I'm amazed you let me so close," he admits softly, unsure of what else to say. None of his law enforcement training suffices for talking to his friend and not a victim passed on to hospital care.

Her fingers flex and she rolls as she tugs her hand free. Instead of moving away, she ends up like they always fall asleep. Head on his chest, ear over his heart, fingers doing a slow tap of his heartbeat. "I know you are safe. You're alive, and I am safe here."

That strikes home in the despairing thoughts he has of bidding them farewell and going somewhere private with his gun and not bothering with life without his family. He's never mentioned those thoughts to her. It seemed so far against the idea she fought so hard to save him, to tell her he often didn't want to live. 

Now? His family is gone, but he's still needed. She's shivering against him, crying a little. Hesitantly, he strokes a hand along her back, and as the shivering calms, he wonders if he can do more than be a life sized teddy bear. Slowly and carefully, he brings his other hand over, and with both hands, traces along everything he can reach without moving her.

It isn't a massage, not this light, more of a wish to replace the memory of the monster she fed to walkers while crippled and still living. The monster's touch was not welcome, but his is. Alex stops crying and actually falls asleep, proving the instinct a good one.

Rick can't let his darkest thoughts win. She's not alone anymore if something happens to him, but it's not the Joneses that she needs to feel safe. It's him. For now, he can focus on that, and keep taking each day one at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG!!! This is the _fifth_ chapter I wrote to try to get something to work for the transition period. It was like wrestling a rabid bear... It was a roadblock chapter for most else.
> 
> Exactly what happened to Alex is up.to individual readers, thus no details.
> 
> I know I promised the Greenes, but it ended up not fitting the tone of the chapter. They'll leave to go south when the weather starts getting colder, settling with the Greenes along the way.


	9. Undefined

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While traveling south, Alex and Rick rescue a young woman from a small herd and get invited temporarily to the family farm.

**November 4, 2010**

The steadily cooler days at the end of October make Alex eye the mountains. It’s Georgia, so the likelihood of snow like she saw in a childhood of Army bases is unlikely. But colder weather means needing to heat the house. The fireplaces in the bed and breakfast are nice enough, and firewood’s free and easy for gathering. But the remoteness here, with seeing no living humans since traveling so far north, makes Alex question whether or not it’s a smart idea to stay with winter creeping in.

Leaning on the sturdy and reinforced wooden privacy fence, Alex mulls over her disquiet from a perch on top of the firewood they have stacked against it.

There’s a warm hand at the small of her back. “You okay?”

She turns, smiling at Rick as he looks concerned. “Oddly restless, and I don’t know why. Part of my brain keeps saying being near the mountains in winter is a bad idea. I think it’s an older habit of not being from Georgia that’s hardwired that winter equals snow.”

Rick chuckles and climbs the wood pile himself to join her. “Half of your life here, and you’re still not thinking of snow as magical like Georgians do?”

“After living in both Alaska and a base near Lake Ontario, no, snow isn’t a magic unicorn for me.” She laughs softly. “There’s a reason I stayed in Georgia after college. I like snow being something I see on vacation. And even if we get no snow at all here, it’s going to be cold.”

“Maybe you need a beach in Florida.”

“Maybe. Would it be weird to want to move further south? We’ve got a good setup here, but there’s just five of us. I’m guessing no survivors headed for the mountains.” They can’t be all that’s left. If nothing else, there should be scraps of the military remaining. Not everyone would have gone out in the field, like that friend that alerted Alex’s boss.

“Once we start running out of canned goods, being further south would be a good idea.” Rick looks thoughtful. “My mother sold it, after my father died, but my family used to have a house on the coast, down south of Savannah. There’s a whole chain of islands down there, from Florida up the coast. Some are resort developed, but others aren’t even populated.”

“So it wouldn’t be a brand new area for us to wander into?” Part of what stays Alex’s need to leave is that she isn’t sure about taking Duane into the complete unknown based on her own uneasy feeling about winter.

“I haven’t been down there in about six or seven years, but it would be easy enough to circle out around Savannah and avoid any walker populations there.”

“Think Morgan and Jenny would want to leave this place?”

“We never planned on it being permanent. I think it just became easier not to leave since we didn’t have any goal in mind to aim for. We’ll ask them at supper.” Rick reaches out and grimaces when he takes her hand, rubbing at the chilled skin. “And you should remember it’s getting too cold to be outside without an extra layer now.”

Alex glances at Rick, dressed no warmer than she is in a long sleeved flannel shirt over a thin t-shirt, but he just gives her a sheepish smile while taking her other hand to warm it too. “C’mon, Alex. Mountains aren’t going to suddenly dump a foot of snow on us if you don’t watch them.”

Apparently, Morgan’s been having a building unease the same as Alex. He’s from south Georgia, and the mountains are pretty to visit, in his opinion, not to live next door to. After a week of planning, securing an RV that they tow Morgan’s Land Rover behind, their tiny group makes their way south. If the route happens to swing significantly east of Atlanta, absolutely no one comments on Rick’s map.

They have to backtrack enough times to worry them. Traffic jams show the panic near the end, with a large population that didn’t trust the promise of the refugee center trying to leave. Once they’re finally south of Atlanta, it eases up a bit, but by then, Rick’s sticking faithfully to the less known routes. Outside of a small town two counties south and east of Atlanta, they stop for the night, pulling into a deserted field that shows no signs of whatever animal or crop should have inhabited it. But the remaining fencing will keep any walkers from just wandering up to the RV or vehicles in the night.

The promise of a quiet night is broken by frantic neighing, then a horse gallops by, minus any rider. It’s got a saddle though, so someone’s ridden it, and recently. The decision to try to help seems like such an easy one, although Rick orders Morgan and Jenny to take the RV and get Duane headed in the direction the horse ran. Hopefully the animal’s sensible enough to go away from danger, not into it.

Alex is glad they stopped with an hour of sunlight left, because she can’t imagine heading into an unknown town in the dark, even to rescue someone. The streets are reasonably clear, and it doesn’t take long to find the cluster of walkers… or the woman perched on the roof of a one-story building. The walkers can’t reach her, but the building is small enough they’re not going to get bored and wander off. Although there are other buildings in the area, none are close enough for the woman to go roof to roof, either.

“Seventeen of the bastards,” Rick mutters. “We can try to take them on, but that’s a lot of noise.”

“Only if you use your Python. We found suppressors for my gun, remember?”

At the reminder that they hadn’t had the skill to modify the barrel of Rick’s Python to accept a suppressor, he eases her handgun out of the holster while she’s idling the Jeep just far enough back the walkers haven’t noticed the engine with fresh prey so close. It’s almost enough with one magazine, too, as Alex brings him in range as he perches out the window. He gets halfway through the magazine, eight shots, before the walkers realize there’s something more interesting than prey they can’t reach.

Thanks to their lumbering speed, they can’t catch Alex’s Jeep either, as she leads them away. It does affect his aim, so he ends up needing more than one shot from the new magazine she passes him. When they circle back around to the building where the woman is, she’s staring at the fallen walkers and hasn’t attempted to climb down yet.

Rick’s back in his seat, but Alex maneuvers the Jeep so that the driver’s side faces the woman. “Saw your horse headed south like his tail was on fire. You need a ride somewhere?”

Her voice seems to finally jar the woman into motion, and she demonstrates how she got on the roof by climbing down the electrical box attachments on the end of the building. Looking between Rick and Alex, she’s glad that Rick wore his uniform shirt for traveling. It’s not like anyone couldn’t steal things like that, but the world hasn't ended so long ago that people have forgotten the instinct to trust cops.

“Farm south of town. That’s probably where my horse headed, since he has better sense than I do, apparently. I knew he was anxious about something, but I needed the supplies.” Motioning toward a dropped backpack, the woman sighs heavily. “I’m Maggie Greene, and you’re a ways from home, deputy.”

Rick laughs at her recognizing that the county name on his shoulder patch is from three counties west of here. “Deputy Rick Grimes. Not much left there to serve and protect, Miss Greene. We’re heading south.”

“Just the two of you?” she eyes Alex even as she picks up her backpack.

“No, we have another family traveling with us. Didn’t want to bring a child into a potentially dangerous situation.” Alex offers a hand through her open window. “I’m Alex.”

Maggie shakes, still assessing both of them, but she looks to the setting sun and then the scattered bodies of the dead. “I think I’ll accept that ride.” She slides into the backseat of the Jeep, behind Alex, still eyeing Rick closely. “Where exactly are you heading?”

“Thought about the barrier islands on the coast,” Rick volunteers, even as Alex gets back on the road, heading back the way the horse was going until Maggie gives directions. “Avoid any really cold weather and maybe an easier barrier than fences between us and the dead.”

“Sounds a lot more logical than staying put on a cattle farm.” Maggie fumbles a sports bottle out of an exterior pocket on the backpack, drinking deeply. Blossom decides to make an appearance from the cargo area and headbutt the startled young woman into petting her.. “I keep telling Daddy I’m seeing larger and larger groups, but he thinks we’re too remote.”

They catch up with the RV - and interestingly enough, Maggie’s horse, his reins held by Jenny as the animal prances nervously. “Why don’t y’all follow me to the farm?” Maggie suggests. “We can feed y’all supper as a thank you for getting me out of that mess. Give you a place to park for the night.”

“We’d appreciate it,” Rick says, watching as she leaves the Jeep to go take her horse from Jenny. 

“She left her backpack. Trusts us to follow,” Alex muses. She’s not surprised one bit when once Maggie’s leading the way on the horse and the RV’s bulk is in between them and the young woman, that Rick reaches for that pack. “Anything worrisome?”

Rick shakes his head. “Canned goods. Sign on the building said it was a food pantry, so I guess she’s taking what she can carry on horseback. Depending on how many she’s feeding? Lot of trips this way, but then you don’t have to scavenge gas. Group could be small as ours, though.”

“She didn’t even seem to have a knife,” Alex notes, wondering at the danger the woman walks into. She’s not much older than a college kid, probably not even twenty-five.

“Might have had a pocket knife of some sort we couldn’t see. Ah. She’s not unarmed. Probably dropped the pack and thus this.” Rick shows Alex the small handgun. “Twenty two, but that would be plenty for the average rotted head walker or any wild animal she came across.”

That’s one thing they’ve noticed. While domestic pets seem as scarce as people, coyotes certainly aren’t. It would certainly be a concern Alex would have in a more rural area like this. “Smart of her. Be smarter to have it holstered on her belt.”

“We’ll be sure to suggest it.”

They reach a series of gates that Maggie opens from horseback, and Rick hops out to close behind them. None are locked, but they’re the sturdy sort meant to keep livestock from reaching the road, with a cattle gap at each gate as well. By the time they reach an old farmhouse, the sun is well and truly set, and a wary trio of males are on the porch as Maggie swings down out of the saddle to explain her visitors. It’s too far away for Alex to hear, even as she brings the Jeep up even with the RV. When she motions for everyone to get out, Alex cuts the engine off.

“Here’s hoping they’re good people, right?” she mutters. Rick just chuckles, handing her Blossom’s fluffy bulk while he takes Maggie’s backpack.

They’ve arrived just at suppertime, it seems, and they get an invitation from the wary veterinarian introduced as Maggie’s father. He studies Rick for a moment. “I remember seeing on the news about your shooting, Deputy Grimes. I’m glad to see you recovered.”

Rick places a hand at the small of Alex’s back, urging her closer. “I had a nurse who stayed when I was left behind in the evacuations, Dr. Greene. Wouldn’t be here without her.”

The older man’s scrutiny on Alex is just as wary, but he nods. “Those are certainly professions where excess bravery is sometimes needed.” Morgan, Jenny, and Duane receive less concern from Hershel, maybe because they are an obvious family unit. The sight of the boy definitely softens his remote expression.

Dinner is tasty enough, showing little signs that the world ended outside this odd little oasis in the Georgia countryside. Baked chicken and rice, roasted potatoes, and fresh baked bread rolls all smell heavenly. It’s not that none of them cook, as putting the four adults together, they have a fairly decent repertoire of recipes. But chicken that’s not from a can? That’s unique. The only fresh meat they’ve had in recent months is what Alex hunts, drawing on skills rusty from her teen years and rarely used as an adult.

They get through the meal pleasantly enough, with all the usual politely nosy questions new people ask of each other. It’s not until the leftovers are put away, and the kids hustled off to wash dishes that any conversation really turns to the devastated world beyond this farm.

“You were working in the hospital when all this happened, right, Alex?” Maggie asks, ignoring a stern look from her father.

“Pediatrics, yes. Specifically, the NICU. They evacuated my patients to Atlanta, or so I was told. When I checked the hospital for any survivors after the military started executing the hospital staff and adult patients, I only found Rick. Somehow they missed him.”

The alarm from the four adults who haven’t heard this before is almost comical. “The military shot hospital staff? Why?” Hershel asks, looking distraught.

“The warning my boss received was that they were to consider all adults exposed and infected.” Alex shivers, remembering hearing those shots from the protection of that locked medication room, followed by hours hiding under the sink. “I survived because my boss made me hide and sacrificed himself as a distraction.”

“But the government would be working on a cure. Why would they execute people not even showing signs of being sick?” The veterinarian seems more outraged than distraught now.

“Because we’re all infected,” Alex says quietly, drawing everyone’s attention. Her own people know this, just like anyone working in a hospital setting figured out quickly, even if the government lied to the general public. “The bites or the original viral illness? Those will kill you directly and swiftly, but whatever this is? It doesn’t matter how you die. We lost a pediatric cancer patient, and he bit his mother and a nurse before it could be contained.”

“Is it possible he already had the illness?” Maggie asks, shooting her father a stern look.

Alex isn’t sure what lies underneath the questions and honestly doesn’t care. “Anything would be possible, except we saw the same scene repeat with other terminally ill patients. Too many to take it lightly, so our labs tested it. We’re all infected.”

Rick stiffens beside her, and she’s not really sure why. 

“What about the CDC?” Hershel asks. “Did you go there to see if they had a solution yet.”

Alex sighs, remembering the massive crater they passed in leaving Atlanta after the devastation of the refugee center. “The CDC is gone. Probably some sort of failsafe device, but there’s nothing or no one there. If anyone’s working on a cure now, it’s not in Atlanta.” It’s always possible the government moved operations elsewhere, like Colorado, which wouldn’t be smack in the middle of a major metropolitan area.

With Hershel falling silent at that bit of news, Maggie turns the conversation to what they’ve seen in towns further afield, with all the Greene farm residents looking more and more morose as they describe the lack of any significant signs of survivors anywhere. Finally, with Jenny and Duane both looking like they’ll nod off on the spot, they bid their hosts good night and venture back to the RV.

With Morgan and Jenny in the RV’s bedroom and Duane in the bunks back near them, there’s actually enough room for Alex and Rick to sleep separately, between the convertible dinette and sofa. Neither of them even consider the dinette, not after so many months of a shared bedroom. Settled together under a thick comforter to offset the amount of propane needed to run the heat in the RV, Rick is far more restless than he’s been in weeks.

“What’s on your mind?” Alex asks at last, propping to an elbow to look down at him. Compared to the man she cared for in the hospital, Rick’s healthy enough now you would never know how touch and go it was for weeks. He’s regained all the weight he lost, steadily putting on muscle mass in a physical therapy routine Alex hasn’t had to monitor at all. She sort of misses the clean shaven cheeks of those hospital days, because the beard he’s been growing in obscures his expression more.

“If I had died in my sleep…” Rick’s voice drifts off, his expression both alarmed and anguished “Caring for me put you in danger from me, not just others.”

“If you died in your sleep, the monitors would have woken me, Rick. You came close enough several times in the first few weeks that I did get woken by alerts. People don’t turn in an instant.” She was foolishly dedicated, not suicidal. Not once did she ever sleep without her makeshift spear at hand. “I would have had enough warning to put you down.”

It settles some of the emotion Rick seems to be undergoing, but she isn’t surprised when he hauls her close and seems to be trying to completely envelop her smaller frame with his taller one. In her ear, he says softly, “Thank God you didn’t.”

Considering Alex had the same thought almost every day that Rick clung to life, she doesn’t mind being a sort of teddy bear to him tonight. She has no idea what they are to each other anymore. They’re too close to be simply friends, but neither has crossed the line that sharing a bed seems to imply they have. It’s easier to just let it drift undefined.

Patting his chest, she yawns. “Get some sleep, Rick. Long day tomorrow.”

Alex is pretty sure he’s still awake when she drifts off, guarding her sleep the way she did his for so long during the summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This just kind of kept trotting along. More in depth into the Greenes in the next chapter.


	10. Close Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A barn going up in flames reveals a Greene family secret, and a supply run turns terrifying for Rick and Alex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note rating change for the story. 😉

November 12, 2010

After a tasty and hearty breakfast on the farm, Rick's topping off their water supplies so they can get back on the road when the blond teenage boy shouts frantically about fire. Long honed instincts send him running, boots pounding toward the shouting. The big barn set back from the main farmyard is ablaze, flames already putting off enough heat to make approaching dangerous.

"Are there animals inside?" Rick shouts, horrified as he sees the chained and padlocked door. It sounds like there's movement inside, but the fire consuming the old structure makes it hard to know for sure. Animals would be screaming, though, wouldn't they?

Maggie and the teenage boy are struggling to spray the space around the barn with garden hoses. They're making progress in soaking the dry grass, but the farm girl leaves the boy to the work to shout at Otis. "Get the tractor, Otis! Dig a fire break behind the barn."

Morgan and the others have arrived, looking on in horror as part of the barn creaks, shifts, and collapses inward. It sends sparks into the dry grass, where a fire sputters into being. Rick's friend reacts faster than the farm hand, because he dashes for the tractor, which has a box blade attached. 

The grass fire is snuffed out between the tractor tires and the box blade, and Morgan circles to drag the blade again and again, scraping away all the dying grass with each pass. Jimmy and Maggie continue to wet down the exposed soil, even as the rest of the farm residents seem frozen in horror. Hershel's weeping softly on his knees, just staring at the barn, and Patricia is literally holding Beth back as she screams and cries. Otis appears to be stalled between helping his wife and helping with the fire.

Rick spies a pile of tin, the sort used for repairing the roofs of farm structures and goes to start dragging sheets of the metal to lay between the barn and the other farm buildings. There isn't as much grass on this side of the barn, but there's enough. He hears a grunt behind him and sees Alex and Jenny move into action, too, dragging their own sheets. 

It takes two hours for the barn to burn down enough to not be a risk to the rest of the farm. They'd stopped fighting against it after an hour or so, with Alex going to sedate Beth when she couldn't stop those raspy screams every time another part of the ancient barn collapsed. The girl's upstairs under Patricia's watchful eye, lost to the world for long enough to figure out what the hell is going on.

Hershel disappeared, leaving Maggie, Otis, and Jimmy to help watch the fire. After Rick finishes the water that Alex pushes on him, he studies the farm trio closely. Something about the fire seems odd, especially the intense grieving that Beth and Hershel were hit with.

Clues slide into place. When Rick ran up, there was already a ring of water saturated ground around the barn. Either Jimmy didn't call for help until it was stupidly late, or he and Maggie wet down the soil and grass before the fire started. Why the hell would they burn down their own barn?

"You okay?" he asks Alex. Her dark hair has escaped its neat braid, sending sweat slick curls around her face. She empties her water bottle and shrugs, looking worried enough that he draws her in for a hug.

"You know something really weird is going on here, right?" Alex says, returning the embrace. "The girl kept calling for her mama."

A sense of horror snakes along Rick's spine. Surely there were no people in the barn? It's possible they didn't meet everyone last night, although suspicious. But if Beth's mama was inside the barn, why did no one try to access it?

Alex steps away, letting Rick advance on the still smouldering barn. Half-burned timbers lie scattered haphazardly, broken and charred. The sooty remains of old metal farm equipment lay among the wood and coals. Despite the heat, he sees bones among the debris. 

"What the hell is going on here?" he roars. Maggie flinches, Otis backs up several steps, and Jimmy bursts into tears.

"The barn was full of walkers." Maggie sounds lost and years younger than she appears. "Daddy…" she swallows hard. "He thought they were just sick, that there would be a cure. But he never went to look...to see how they were rotting away."

Otis actually reaches out and places a comforting hand on her shoulder. His expression shifts from wary of Rick to something more protective as Maggie starts crying. It's not loud and heartbroken like Beth's grief, but somehow, the quiet weeping is worse. Otis sighs before he speaks.

"Hershel's wife and son were in there. He wanted a cure more than he wanted to know what was really happening to them. Didn't see what we saw, me and Maggie and my wife. Parts missing, wasting away no matter how many chickens Patricia fed them."

"A cure would have been cruel, if it ever existed," Alex says, sounding horrified. Her hand curls around his bicep, and some of his ire drains away.

"Yeah." Maggie makes a hiccuping sound, even as Otis passes her a handkerchief. "I didn't expect the barn to burn like that. Not that hot and fast. Jimmy and I wet it down before I set the fire. It had to be fire. I couldn't shoot Shawn or the woman who raised me."

"Barn's old, Maggie," Otis says soothingly. "Been painted, lots of flammables stored over the years. Wish you'd come to me."

"Would you really have helped? Gone against Daddy? Shot Patricia's only blood family other than Beth?"

The farm hand puts an arm around Maggie, and the girl allows it, leaning into his bulk. "To spare you doing it? Yes. It seemed safe enough, them having hope. Bringing back neighbors, putting down the strangers."

Maggie blinks up at Otis. "You didn't believe in a cure either."

"Like the lady said, a cure would have been cruel by now. Maybe months ago, it was something to hope for, but not now." The big man squares his shoulders. "My apologies for not assisting as I should. We probably owe your people the farm."

"People freeze in a crisis," Alex says, fingers biting into Rick's arm as if she knows he was about to say something rude. "But I don't think we should leave today. Beth's in need of medical observation. I'm guessing she hasn't grieved for her mother."

Maggie and Otis exchange a long look. The girl answers. "If you're willing to stay a few days, we'd appreciate it. Make sure you've got some better supplies."

Rick glances over to where Morgan is standing with Jenny and Duane. The adult Joneses nod in agreement. "We'll stay as long as we're needed. There's no deadline in us reaching the coast."

They look reassured at his words, and Otis lets Maggie go to approach Jimmy. "C'mon, Jimmy. Let's get you a shower and clean clothes. It'll seem less overwhelming then." He leads the boy away.

"Showers sound fantastic," Maggie mutters, pushing her sweat damp hair away from her face. "Hot water won't hold out for more than two, though before it has to reheat."

"RV has a tankless water heater," Rick tells her. "If we can hook up to the water directly, that'll sort us out."

Maggie nods, motioning to the hoses. "There's a spigot around front, too, but we took the hose. You'll need to move the RV closer." With them settled, she heads into the house.

Alex sighs. "Time to get it sorted."

"You and Jenny go first. Morgan and I will keep an eye on things here." The odds that the fire will spread now are low, but why risk it?

By the time he does go for a shower, he and Morgan have soaked the embers a few more times. Otis comes back out to hold vigil, and it sets the pattern for the next two days. The men keep an eye on the smouldering mess, and the women look after Beth. Hershel disappeared into his room and did not reappear. The only reason no one's forced contact is that the man does seem to be eating the meals Patricia leaves outside his door. 

By the third day, Rick, Morgan, and Otis are able to salvage what bones they can from the remains of the barn. Hershel doesn't attend the funeral, but Beth wobbles out, fragile and pale. Alex has her taking some sort of antidepressant, so she seems to be coping at last. Jenny takes the girl aside later, starting some project for beautifying the little cemetery.

Alex takes a deep breath. "We need more supplies, if we're staying."

She's right, and none of them feel comfortable leaving the farm less protected. As they've discussed, there's no deadline they have to meet. "We can do a run. Take your Jeep."

That gets him a smile, and it doesn't take long to prepare for the trip. They passed through a mostly untouched town on the way here, with few walkers visible. It should have plenty of supplies, and they've learned they work together well over the past few months.

Bringing back a Jeep full means they return the next few days, clearing businesses first. The fourth day, they start gleaning through houses, since the town's just far enough out that the Greenes probably won't know as many people here.

"These little cookie cutter subdivisions always give me flashbacks to base housing," Alex comments as she empties her pack into a box in the back of the Jeep. 

Rick chuckles. "It does look stamped out on a production line, doesn't it?" His pack is empty already, so he's just scanning the neighborhood. They put down four roamers when they entered the cul-de-sac, but nothing else seems to be moving.

"I never understood buying places like this. Apartments are one thing. You expect those to be similar. But houses? Those need some character to them, to commit to a mortgage that lasts like half your life."

Rick laughs, glancing sideways at her. "So nothing plain jane if we can settle on the island?"

It takes her a minute to reply, but then she nods. "Nothing cookie cutter."

Shouldering her pack, she leads him to the next house. Clearing it goes like clockwork until a damned raccoon startles Alex by bursting out of a half closed pantry. She stumbles over a kitchen chair, and the screen door is no support at all, ripping as Alex goes through it to tumble onto the back deck.

Rick's heart nearly stops when he hears snarling start up, and Alex's strangled cry. Leaping over the fallen chair, he slams through the damaged door. Alex is pinned under the biggest fucking walker he's ever seen, fighting with all her strength to keep the thing's teeth off her throat.

Blood and brain matter spray all over Alex when Rick shoves his Python to the side of its rotten head and fires. She's sobbing when he rolls it off her, letting him haul her into his arms and tug her back in the house. He slams the door, throwing the deadbolt home.

He knows he should get her back to the farm, but she's covered in fetid walker blood and gore. As hard as she's shaking, he can't imagine taking her outside, not yet. Instead, he carries her to the bathroom. Standing her gently in the bathtub, he starts examining her.

The clear, bloody print of human teeth on the forearm of the little powder blue jacket she wore because the day was chilly makes his blood run cold. "Oh God, no." 

Getting the jacket off isn't enough, because she's got a long sleeved flannel shirt under the jacket. It takes everything he has in him to unbutton the cuffs and tug the shirt off. She's almost pliant as he does it, no longer crying. 

Rick sobs himself when the green plaid peels away to reveal bruised, but unbroken skin. "He didn't make it through your jacket. Alex, you're not bit. Look, baby, it's okay." Rick runs his fingers along her forearm until she finally looks.

Alex blinks weakly and begins to strip away the rest of her clothing, and he guesses he understands. The walker had been rotten enough that her struggle against it meant she's covered in bits and pieces of the bastard that nearly killed her. Rick helps, getting her free of her boots. The water from the tap is cold, but he finds a washcloth and sponges everything off her skin.

It seems almost too intimate, no matter how much they've shared, until he remembers just how many times she cared for him in similar ways during his coma. Wrapping her in a bath towel, he picks her up again, carrying her into one of the bedrooms. Neither of them are up to getting in the car, not yet.

Alex is chilled, shivering against him before he lays her down. Rick kicks off his boots and sheds his jacket and overshirt, climbing under the bedcovers with her. She clutches at his shirt, and he wraps himself around her. "I've got you. You're safe."

By the time she stops shivering, he's still remembering the terrifying feeling that gripped him seeing her on the deck. That bite mark on her jacket? Jesus, he came so close to losing her. His hand shakes as he smoothes her damp hair, still wet from his clumsy washing.

"Alex?" he asks softly. 

She tilts her head up to look at him, hazel eyes dark in the dimly lit bedroom. "I'm okay."

"I'm glad." Settling his hand along her jaw, he idly strokes his thumb along her skin. He can tell when the gesture registers beyond any of the usual platonic affection they share. Her breath catches, and she bites her bottom lip. "Alex." 

It's barely above a whisper, but it seems to make her decision for her, because she's kissing him, and the only real thought he manages is that they should have done it sooner. She's smiling when they finally part, and he's the one that begins the next kiss. Kissing her is something he never wants to stop doing.

Although he's careful to keep his hands to her shoulders and back, remembering that night she finally told him what happened to her the day he woke from his coma, Alex is not so hesitant. Their kisses lead to him being settled to his back, and Alex sliding atop him to smile down at him. She's hitched his white undershirt up, fingers warm against his belly. 

This probably isn't the best state of mind for them to make such a significant change, but all he knows is that nothing has felt this right in his life in a very long time. Alex keeps hitching his shirt higher, exploring the contours of his chest. He helps her get the shirt off, resting his hands on her hips as she leans in to kiss him again.

One of her hands disappears for a moment, and he finds out why when she sits back up. Her bra slides free, and she drops it over the side of the bed to join his shirt. 

"Alex? Are you sure?"

She smiles down at him. "More than anything."

Rolling her back onto the bed allows him to strip away their remaining clothing, but he takes his time. It comes to him how long he's wanted this, settled in the back of his mind, because there's no urgency other than a desperate need to make it last. Even as she slides a leg over his, he waits and teases until he's beyond sure she is ready for him.

Then they're joined, and it's perfect, and she's alive for him to move with her. His name is on her lips as her body bucks beneath him, pleasure evident in the husky repetition of his name. He's only moments behind her, legs cramping and vision white with the impact of his climax.

Alex peppers small kisses on his face even as he tries to get his weight off her. Once they're lying side by side, he joins in the kisses. "Good?" he asks softly against her lips.

"Perfect." Rick can't see her expression as well as he'd like, but the happiness is clear enough in her smile and how she molds herself close to him. 

He holds her for a while, enjoying how she feels against him. "We should probably be getting back. Morgan will send out a search party."

Alex huffs out a breath against his skin. "Imagine him finding us like this. Whatever would he say?"

"About damn time, I suspect."

Alex laughs, because both Joneses seem to find their contentment in each other's company without sex amusing. "You might be right." She sits up and shivers. "I need some clean clothes."

That's a problem Rick can solve for her, so he crosses to the closet. If she happens to make a teasing, naughty comment about his naked backside, at least it distracts her from the memories of her close call sneaking back up on her. Alex is safe today, and he'll make it his purpose to keep her that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They'll delve more into the interpersonal issues with the Greene family dysfunction in Alex's chapter...


	11. Worth Getting Older

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth's innocent request leads Alex to have a heart to heart with Hershel about the nature of grief.

November 28, 2010

It’s funny, Alex thinks, that she and Rick spent months sleeping in the same bed, often close together, and nothing happened. Reawakening both their libidos seems to have a genie they can’t put back in the bottle. It feels a bit like being a teenager again, this inability to keep their hands off each other.

Sadly, they aren’t teenagers with only homework and parental approval to worry about. Hershel’s depression lessened enough that the man ventured out of his room the day after Alex’s brush with death. But he spends his days drifting from his home office to the porch to his room, with only meals in between. Maggie may be an adult, but Beth isn’t, and both girls are trying to tackle their own grief while watching their father move around as a ghost of his former self.

Alex can’t leave a child in need, and no one else seems to want to make her. After the first day, where she sedated Beth, the girl responds well to the antidepressant. Everyone takes turns keeping her busy, and Beth is slowly edging away from the intense grief her mother and brother’s final death inspired in her.

“Hey, Alex?” It’s been a quiet day for Beth so far. The teenager has been following Alex through her day of inventory and laundry, helping without being bidden. Running the washer and dryer are luxuries they don’t want to spare generator fuel for, and Hershel’s family has been on this farm long enough Patricia long since unearthed an old hand crank wringer washer. It makes laundry quite the workout.

Pausing in clipping one of Rick’s shirts to the line, Alex looks over to where Beth is readying the next piece of clothing. “Yeah?”

The blonde grimaces at a stain on Otis’s shirt and dunks it for an extra scrub. “Could Daddy take medicine like mine?”

“Oh, honey.” Alex sighs, glancing toward the house. She can’t see Hershel in his spot on the front porch, but she knows that’s where he is this time of day. “Sometimes grief is something you have to work through on your own.”

It’s not like she and Rick haven’t both tried to talk to Hershel. Rick’s lost a wife and child, and Alex her stepdaughters, but shared grief doesn’t seem to bridge the gap with the veterinarian.

“But it would help, wouldn’t it? I felt like I was being smothered before, ever since people started dying. Months of it, but the last week or so, it’s not so bad.” 

Beth’s expression is so open and earnest that Alex thinks it over. She’d hesitated to medicate Beth, but trusting the same instinct that led her to take Lizzie to a psychiatrist, she’d proposed it to Patricia. The woman grew up with Annette Greene, her first cousin, so she agreed readily. Annette had suffered from similar deep depressions after deaths in the family and taken antidepressants for a few months each time.

“I can try to talk to him again. Let him know you’re concerned.”

“Thank you.” Beth smiles shyly, dropping the shirt she’s finished into Alex’s basket. “I’m going to go get some more hot water from the kitchen. This is getting cold.”

It’ll take Beth a while to boil a few pots of water to refresh the wash water, so Alex finishes hanging the already washed clothes and heads around to the front of the house. Hershel’s on the porch swing, snow white head bent over his Bible. She knows he hears her come up the steps, because his hands tighten around the book, but he doesn’t look up.

Maybe trying to empathize with Hershel was the wrong tactic. This time, Alex goes for blunt words. “Your daughter thinks you need to be medicated for depression, Dr. Greene.”

He’s startled enough to look up, but he’s not angry, at least. “What?” It’s the first thing he’s said to her since the barn burned.

“Beth thinks that an antidepressant would help you better come to terms with her mother and brother’s death.”

“Beth?” The puzzlement in his voice is probably justified. It’s probably the sort of thing Maggie would do, not Beth.

She takes a chance and sits next to the man on the swing. “I prescribed Beth something when she struggled to come to terms with things. It’s been helping her. She’s been struggling for months.”

The pain in Hershel’s expression is one that Alex knows well. She spent a couple of months trying to convince herself that she was wrong about Lizzie. Before, she just told Hershel her daughters had gone to the Refugee Center that fell to the dead. Now, she shares that stressful, horrible last year of her marriage, watching as he actually seems engaged and curious.

“That’s why you stayed,” he says at last. His hands smooth the page of his Bible. “You couldn’t leave when you saw a child suffering as yours did.”

Alex nods slowly. It hadn’t helped that pretty, delicate blonde Beth looks so much like her girls that working alongside her on chores is both a joy and salt on a wound that will never heal. She knows Rick has a similar issue with Duane, not because of physical similarities, but because the sweet, mischievious boy is so like Carl that Rick can’t help but compare them.

“Are you a religious woman, Miss Ybarra?”

The question is unexpected, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. Hershel’s faith is one of the things all the members of his household mention in stories of the man. “I consider myself a woman of faith, yes.” 

“How does your faith reconcile with the world as it stands today?”

“The same way it always did when horrible things happened in the world.” She glances at Hershel's Bible, noting the chapter he’s reading. “I’m not so sure this is the end of times, Dr. Greene. A trial of humanity, perhaps, but not the end.”

The veterinarian smiles softly, closing the book. “Why do you believe that?”

“Because where there are children, there is always hope.”

He’s quiet for a while, gaze going out to the small family cemetery that can be seen from the porch swing. Between Patricia and Beth, there’s a knee high decorative fence around the two family graves now. Otis carved a pair of wooden crosses, and Maggie wove a gauzy ribbon along the top of the fence that adds a flash of red, which was both Annette and Shawn’s favorite colors.

“You must think me the most selfish man in the world.”

“Even if my training didn’t tell me so, I’ve experienced enough loss to understand that everyone grieves differently, and the same person may grieve differently under different circumstances.” She had expected both her parents’ deaths, even if she would have wished each of them at least a decade more of life. Her twin? Nothing topped losing Alvaro until she realized her girls were in that devastated place in Atlanta.

Hershel stands, the movement slow and looking as if it pained him. As depressed as he’s been, it likely does. He doesn’t head for the house, like she expects, instead heading down the steps and walking slowly toward the cemetery. When he sinks to his knees next to Annette’s grave and begins to talk, she decides to give him privacy and returns to the laundry with Beth.

The real change shows at supper, when Hershel turns to his younger daughter, seated on his left. “After supper, perhaps you could sing for us, Bethie, while Otis plays.”

Beth’s smile lights up the room, because it’s the first time Hershel’s spoken directly to anyone during a meal without being asked a question. It’s certainly the first time he’s requested anything joyful to be done. The girl glances over to Alex before turning back to her father. “Of course I will, Daddy. But we can all sing happy birthday to Rick first.”

Rick freezes beside Alex, his fingers brushing her elbow to gain her attention. “That’s got to be your doing.” 

“Of course. There’s even lemon raspberry tart for dessert.” Patricia had known how to make the dessert, and luckily the supplies had been among the things gathered in Alex and Rick’s supply runs.

It earns her a kiss right at the table, sweet and chaste, and Rick’s blushing at the outright grins everyone is wearing except Hershel. Even the veterinarian seems to approve of the display of affection, watching them with something close to a smile. The tart is a hit with everyone, a treat they know won’t last since lemon juice won’t be around once the bottles scrounged from abandoned store shelves run out. Maybe once they wander further south, if it’s safe, they can find actual citrus fruit.

Alex is a little surprised when Hershel approaches as everyone’s getting ready to retire for the night. Rick’s hand is warm at the small of her back as she confirms with Maggie that they’re doing a supply run the next day. He smiles at them both.

“It seems to me that if you are staying to continue helping my family, perhaps an RV isn’t the best place for four adults and a child to be staying during the winter,” the veterinarian begins. “And we would use fewer resources to heat one house for us all.”

Considering the massive amount of seasoned firewood Morgan has been helping Otis collect from other farms, Hershel is probably right. Propane for the RV is easy enough to find now, but they’re running the heating sparingly, and only at night. Looking at Rick, Alex gives a little nod when he arches an eyebrow. “What do you have in mind?” he asks Hershel.

“My girls can share a room, and perhaps young Duane can join Jimmy in Shawn’s old room, if that’s okay with his parents. Otis and Patricia have the attic bedroom, but that would leave the guest room downstairs for one couple and one of the girls’ rooms for the other.”

Rick looks at Alex. “Is this far enough south to relieve your phobia about snow?” It’s light and teasing, enough to make her smile.

Hershel chuckles. “We haven’t had any significant snow here in a long time. This year could surprise me, but probably not.”

“Our only real goal was to head for the islands, so we wouldn’t have to worry about fences. Sometimes the walkers bunch up into large enough groups to be dangerous,” Rick tells him. “Staying here would be good, but your fences are only meant to keep cattle from wandering, not keep walkers out.”

“How about we sit down tomorrow and see what improvements would be helpful?” Hershel replies. “At least here, we know the land and the climate.”

Rick agrees, and rather than tucking into the RV for the night, they find themselves bringing their immediate possessions inside. Morgan and Jenny are fine with Duane sharing with Jimmy, and the teenager seems happy enough to have a roommate despite the age difference. The Jones take Maggie’s room upstairs, leaving Rick and Alex to the downstairs guest room. 

Alex is unpacking their clothing into the room’s dresser when Rick catches her around the waist, pressing a kiss under her ear as he pulls her close so her back rests against his chest. “I’m surprised he didn’t kick up a fuss about us not being married,” he notes, still nuzzling at her throat.

The level of casual affection Rick gives her is heady. She hopes it lasts beyond the honeymoon phase they’re currently in, because there’s something adorable in his playful caring touch. “He does seem the uptight sort, at least before. Now? At least he’s not fussy with the world gone upside down. Would you prefer to sleep on the couch?” she teases.

“Hell no, and not just because our own room means not sneaking around like we’re sixteen and ducking our parents.” Rick turns her in his arms, blue gaze solemn as he meets her eyes. “I don’t want to sleep anywhere else but beside you.”

There’s a lot still left unsaid between them, she knows. That first time in the abandoned house had happened because the encounter with the big walker wiped away any shyness about each other. She cups his face and kisses him tenderly. “I feel the same way.”

Finishing unpacking gets delayed a bit, because Rick guides her back to the bed. “We’re the only ones on the whole ground floor,” he observes. “And we have a door now.”

Laughing, she helps him shed clothing, admiring the lean muscle he’s put on after so many weeks of losing weight in the hospital. If not for the scarring, she would never guess he’d been in a coma earlier in the year. “Gonna turn into a nude sleeper on me?”

“Something tells me a wood heated house probably merits pajamas.” Her current lack of pajamas has his entire attention. He’s a toucher, often blushing when he explores her bare skin with his hands and eyes. Being bold in the bedroom isn’t his norm, she thinks, remembering the months ago admission about his transition from his relationship with Shane to the one with Lori.

“And socks. Fuzzy socks, if we can find any.” This place doesn’t have carpets. But she forgets about warm feet when he’s kissing her. 

They can take their time tonight. There’s no worry about sneaking in an interlude while on a run, and there’s no avoid sex in favor of bringing each other to peak with careful touching in silence because there’s only a thin accordion door between them and their friends’ eleven-year-old son.

Rick gasps when she nips at his collarbone, and she grins just a little. He likes the mock bites, so she ventures to something she hasn’t before, following kisses and nips of teeth all the way to take the warm heat of him in her mouth. It doesn’t take long to have him panting her name, hand tugging lightly at her hair in warning. She has no intention of stopping, so the slightly bitter taste of his pleasure isn’t unexpected when his body contracts.

He’s watching her with heavily lidded eyes when she eases herself up to lie beside him. “That was a good birthday present,” he drawls, sounding blissed out.

Alex just grins, stretching out beside him. “Worth getting a year older for?”

“No.” It’s spoken so decisively that she arches a brow, until he rolls her beneath him, kissing her with a heat that belies that he’s already climaxed. She ends up making a needy whine that she’s absolutely not ashamed to admit to. He grins when he lets them up for air, and she can feel the evidence that his body is already awakening again when he rocks his hips against her. “What’s worth getting a year older for is you.”

Now that’s a sentiment she can get on board with. “Maybe the world will let us get old and gray together.”

It wasn’t a guarantee, even before the world ended, that a couple could grow old at each other’s side. Rick was probably headed for divorce before he was shot, and Alex’s marriage failed when life got harder than either she or Ryan could overcome. But looking at Rick right now, she wants to be optimistic about their chances.

He must agree, because he reaches up to thread his fingers in her long, loose hair before claiming another kiss. His expression is serious when he looks at her again. “I am so fucking in love with you, you know.”

“Yeah, I do know.” She smiles broadly. “I love you, too”

She is, and she’s forgotten how good it feels to make love with a man she’s wanting to spend her life with. It’s slow and sweet and sweaty, his fingers twined with hers, because tonight they can take their time. It’ll happen again and again between them, and she can’t help but pray for years upon years of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit soft and slow, but honestly, there really isn't any great trauma planned for the Greene Farm before they finally get the nudge to wander further south. They may not last the entire winter on the farm, but we'll see, since we've gone completely AU here.


	12. Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An earlier indiscretion leads to happy consequences for Rick and Alex.

**December 25, 2010**

Rick wakes when Alex slips from the bed, the urgency of her movement spiking alarm through him. The sound of vomiting is unmistakable, and he hisses as his bare feet hit the cold hardwood floor. The fireplace heats the bedroom decently, but the fire's at its lowest right now and doesn't heat the floor much on this side of the bed even at its best.

"Alex? You okay?"

He almost smacks himself for the stupid question. She's kneeling on a frigid bathroom floor, dry heaving, at 4:30 in the morning. Of course, she's not okay.

Dampening a washcloth, he kneels next to her and takes over holding her loose, dark hair away from the toilet. "Here, got you a cloth. Do you need some water?"

Alex takes the washcloth, but barely gets one swipe of the cloth across her skin before she's trying to be sick again. Helpless, all Rick can do is rub her back and try to figure out what's wrong. Finally, she slumps back against the wall across from the toilet, groaning and covering her face with the washcloth.

"Mouthwash." It's mumbled from under the cloth, but distinct enough for Rick to reach for the bottle of cinnamon mouthwash Alex prefers. She rinses her mouth twice, spitting into the toilet before flushing.

Rick honestly didn't think it was possible for Alex to be so pale. Her summer bronzed complexion lost some of its tan as winter took hold and they stay indoors more, but this morning? She's downright ashen right now, and it worries him.

"Alex? What's wrong?"

She's staring at the rack under the sink with a confused expression, tapping her fingers against her knee as if counting something. Looking at the contents, Rick sees extra toilet paper, soap, three bottles of his shampoo… and an unopened box of tampons. The math falls into place for him, along with the fact that they've had no interruptions in the six weeks since that first afternoon together.

"Oh," he says softly. He reaches out and captures her twitching hand, lacing his fingers with hers. It's a little stunning, because they have been careful...except the day he nearly lost her.

"Oh," Alex repeats, taking a deep breath. She blinks and turns to look at him, hazel eyes searching his. "It might not be…"

"And it might be." Rick lifts her hand up and places a gentle kiss on her palm. "I love you, you know."

The carefully neutral expression she's wearing morphs into a smile. "I love you, too. My backside is freezing."

That makes him laugh, because she's right that the tile floor isn't a great place for any sort of conversation, much less what they need to figure out. The fireplace heat never quite reaches the bathroom properly. He gets to his feet and draws her up after him. It doesn't surprise him that she stops to brush her teeth, unwilling to just rely on mouthwash, so he joins her and cleans his.

Alex burrows back under the quilts, and Rick builds the fire up and lights the oil lamp on the bedside table before joining her. They reserve the generator's electricity for things they can't manage without, like the refrigerator and freezers. When she tucks her head to his chest, he rubs her back through the thin fabric of the white t-shirt she appropriated from his clothes.

Their height difference always makes his brain associate the word delicate with her, despite the fact that she's proven over and over again that she's nothing of the sort. Right now, she's curled up against him like she's trying to become smaller, and it worries him. His brain starts bouncing to the possibilities: possibly having to be on the road while she's pregnant, problems with the birth, a baby in need of medical care they can't give.

It makes him tense up, which conversely, seems to make her relax and try to comfort him. She tilts her head up so she can see him. "We don't know for sure. Could be something I ate or a stomach virus."

"Odds seem against that, don't they?" he asks, cupping her cheek with one hand. "We haven't even discussed the possibility." Maybe they should have, because he knows condoms aren't foolproof, even if they hadn't been unprotected the first time. Hell, he knows birth control isn't, either, with how Carl was conceived.

Alex takes a deep breath, but her voice is subdued when she speaks. "I always wanted a baby when I was married before. It seemed like there would be plenty of time for it, so why not work and save up? Then things went bad between us, and the selfish part of me was glad it hadn't happened."

"I can understand that." That last fight with Lori had him thinking most of that day about how he was glad they only dragged one kid in the middle of their mess. "Never seemed the right time for me and Lori, either."

Busy lives combined with a guilt that never quite left Rick hadn't made for a spectacular sex life with Lori. He'd often wondered what sex would be like without guilt lurking around the edges of his libido. Guilt with Shane because he knew how his parents would see him being with a man. Guilt with Lori because he loved her as much as he was capable, but he wasn't in love with her.

Maybe there should be guilt with Alex, because his family has only been gone six months, but for the first time in his life, all he ever feels is joy and passion. He understands now why people rave about sex so much.

"If I am, I know it's risky, even with Hershel's help, but I don't think I could end it," she says softly. 

Rick isn't even sure how that could be managed, but Alex is an experienced nurse. He's sure she knows how. "That's your choice," he replies. "I wouldn't ask you to keep a baby if you didn't want one. But if you do…"

He thinks of Carl, and his chest aches with renewed grief. The idea of another child is both terrifying and hopeful. "I would be a very happy man." Even if she isn't pregnant now, if they can find a safe haven, he would love to try for a child together, and he tells her that.

Alex ducks her head again, but she's smiling against the soft skin of his throat. "I actually have tests in my supplies."

Considering how she collects a little of everything, he isn't surprised. "Want me to go ferret on out for you?"

Alex thinks it over and then nods. It's late enough now that Rick can hear someone moving in the kitchen, probably Patricia putting on coffee and starting breakfast for Otis before he does his inspection of the cattle. Slipping out of bed, he heads to the room generally referred to as the parlor, which now serves as a storeroom for all their surplus supplies that need some climate control.

Alex's medical supplies are easy enough to look through, since years of hospital work trained her to label and logically sort everything. There are three boxes, each with two tests, so he picks the one with the digital display instead of the more confusing double line ones. Patricia smiles at him as he passes the doorway to the kitchen, but doesn't stop him.

Alex is sitting up in the bed, petting Blossom, speaking softly to the cat, who tends to sleep with Beth these days, but must have followed Patricia downstairs. When he offers her the box, she nods and takes it before heading into the bathroom. Rick paces, unable to sit, emotions yoyoing from fear to joy to worry to anticipation.

She emerges with the little plastic device in one hand and sets it on the dresser near the fireplace. Instead of climbing back in bed, she wraps her arms around his waist, converting his pacing to a swaying sort of half-dance. "Three minutes," she tells him.

It makes him cup her face again and lean in for a kiss this time. She makes the contented little purring noise that never fails to make him smile. They spend the entire time until her watch beeps just exploring soft, tender kisses.

Before she can reach for the stick, Rick stops her. "Want to ask you something, before it seems like a factor."

Alex looks curious, so he takes both her hands, wishing the thoughts he's been having lately gave him more skill with words. "I know it might seem too soon, and maybe even unnecessary with the world the way it is, but I wanna marry you. I want anyone we ever meet, now and always, to never question how much I love you, because we're married in a world that doesn't require it anymore."

He's talked it over with Hershel the past week, and that's the conclusion his fellow widower helped him come to. A ceremony here isn't legal by old world standards, but those will likely never return. In the time before governmental paperwork, that's all it took anyway, a couple declaring their intentions in front of witnesses.

Alex blinks, looking surprised and smiling hesitantly. "You don't have to marry me for me to know you love me."

"No, I don't." One thing he learned from how things didn't work with Lori is that giving a woman a ring didn't magically make everything work smoothly in a marriage. "But I want to marry you, more than anything in the world."

He'd proposed to Lori out of obligation, because that's what a good man of his upbringing did when he got his girlfriend pregnant. Honestly, there wasn't much proposal to it, more of a fumbled promise to do the right thing and take care of Lori and the baby. At that point, he was still so painfully in love with Shane that it felt like chewing glass.

This feels so much different, and now he knows why people always look so joyful when they're in the middle of a proposal, especially when Alex nods. Her smile brightens, and she drags him to her in a kiss that's almost enough to make him forget the other issue at hand.

"That a yes?"

"That's a yes." Alex blinks rapidly, holding off tears, and squeezes his hand until he frees one of them. Reaching for the little stick, she turns it where he can see it.

In clear, unmistakable English: pregnant.

They nearly miss breakfast, spending an hour celebrating in the fashion that got them that particular message in the first place.

Christmas Day or not, it's still a farm, and chores are even more intense when the predators to be guarded against are walkers. Morgan's construction skills combined with Hershel and Otis's general cattle farm knowledge has the farmhouse and the two closest fields enclosed by a ten foot tall fence of metal and girders scavenged from metal buildings around the county.

Otis's ingenious idea to bring in hay bales from surrounding farms provides sound insulation by lining every metal fence with multiple rows of the huge, round hay bales that weigh over a ton. It serves as backup food for the cattle, and an outstanding layer of protection for the farm's residents, human and animal.

They still use the less protected fields, but just for daytime grazing, and the cattle adapt easily enough. Rick takes longer, especially learning to ride, to the Greene sisters' endless amusement. It isn't one of the girls out with Rick today, but Hershel himself.

"That is an awful persistent smile on your face, son. Am I correct to assume you acted on the subject we've been discussing?"

Rick glances over at Hershel, grinning. "Yeah, I did."

"Expression that joyful, the young lady must have said yes." It's not often than Hershel smiles when it's not one of the girls, but he is now. Maybe everyone needs this normal sort of happy.

"She did." Rick shifts in the saddle, glad being saddle sore is finally a thing of the past. "We're thinking something simple, maybe after supper? Family as witnesses, if you'll speak a few words."

That makes Hershel rein in his horse, so Rick follows suit. They're at the far end of the day's grazing pasture, with no walkers sighted today so far. The older man dismounts, and once Rick is on his feet, too, he offers a hand. "I'd be honored."

"Thank you." Rick's debating telling him about the baby, but before he can, Hershel pulls a cloth pouch out of his jacket's inner pocket and hands it over. It clinks, just a little, from something inside.

"Open it. It's a gift from all of us, although it's Bethie's idea."

When Rick unties the makeshift pouch, it turns out to be a handkerchief. But inside are three rings, two wedding bands and a delicate ring with two small pear shaped emeralds on their sides with the smaller ends overlaid. When he looks up at Hershel, the man is still smiling, something wistful in his expression.

"The wedding bands belonged to Annette's parents, and their family tradition was to never bury them, but pass them on. They were happily married for fifty-nine years, so there's a lot of love embued those. Annette and I already had our rings, so we put them away for Shawn one day. Both the girls would like to see them passed on." 

Hershel nudges the emerald ring. "It's not an engagement ring, since that wasn't much of a tradition when they married. But my mother-in-law had several pieces, and Beth wants Alex to have this one."

"It's her birthstone. Alex was born at the end of May," Rick clarifies, and Hershel nods. "Are you certain about this, Hershel?" Rings hadn't even been on Rick's radar, not the way things are now.

"This is something both the girls and I want to do for you and Alex. You both looked after my girls when I wasn't in the right frame of mind to do so." Hershel glances off to the cattle grazing in the distance. He's been growing his beard in over the last month, and Rick thinks he's well in his way to looking like Santa Clause. "They'll appreciate the joy of being part of this."

Rick ties the handkerchief up and tucks it in his own jacket pocket. "Thank you, Hershel."

"It's a blessed thing, to find love twice in one lifetime. Cherish it."

Although Hershel's reference is to Lori, and Rick never shared anything more than his strained marriage with the older man, it's still applicable. Now more than ever, he knows how fragile life is, and how one more day to fix something is never a guarantee. "I will."

The older man nods and gets back in the saddle. Rick follows, the precious gift riding along until he can present them to Alex.

In the end, getting married is quite simple, as he imagines it once would have been in places with no church or gathering place. Simple words are exchanged after Hershel reads a few passages for them from his well worn Bible, followed by rings with a happy history they'll add another generation to by August. If ghosts seem to linger, it's to be expected, but Rick likes to think all their families would have enjoyed the promise of today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who've read my stories before, y'all know that proposals and weddings sort of give me hives to try to write, so hopefully this suffices. 😉
> 
> Why no one ever uses one ton hay bales for fence reinforcement, I'll never understand. I'm kind of mad at myself for not having the idea sooner, to be honest, considering my property's hayfield has to be baled three times a year. 
> 
> I had another Negative Nellie Rick fan tumble along to my stories while writing this. Luckily, I wasn't mean to Rick as a result like the last time, eh? 😉


	13. His Family is Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick comes across survivors out of Atlanta that lead him to finding Carl.

April 14, 2011

Their original plan had been to stay the winter at the Greene farm and explore further south later, but getting attached to the Greene family makes it less of a good prospect. Alex’s pregnancy also changes things, because as skilled as she is, being her own midwife at delivery would be a bit more complicated than Rick wants to see happen. Hershel’s a veterinarian, but that also means he’s overseen plenty of births of all sorts.

The hay bale walls create a fortress unlike any Rick could have imagined without them. Once everyone knew about Alex being pregnant, more walls were built. As far as walkers are concerned, the property is secure, and leaving a secure property is the height of stupidity right now. They’ve outlasted two herds; one by sheer, excruciating patience until something distracted the poor bastards into moving west, and one by being the distraction themselves thanks to some of Morgan’s ingenious inventions.

Today is a patrol out to a town to the south, scouting a suburb where the residents either died or evacuated without taking all their necessities with them. Even after two and a half months, it doesn't feel like the norm for Rick to look over and see Maggie as his partner for supply runs.

The young woman smiles when she catches the side glance. “She’s not going to disappear because we’re going to be out all day, you know.”

Rick laughs softly. “I keep reminding myself that she survived for months while keeping me alive, and she’s not alone now.”

“But your hindbrain keeps screaming that your pregnant wife is too far away for you to easily reach, doesn’t it?”

“Like a foghorn in the back of my mind.”

“You know, Morgan and I could do the supply runs.”

“I suspect if I stayed completely underfoot, I’d end up living out in the stable with the horses.” Rick knows he’s overprotective, and he does his best to tone it down, because Alex only appreciates the sentiment so far. Most of her tolerance is from her understanding that he’s lost one family, because pregnancy hormones certainly escalate her own mourning at unexpected times.

“Stop!”

They’ve worked together long enough now that Rick doesn’t even hesitate at the command. He reins in his horse, before turning his head to where Maggie is pointing. It’s the first sign either of them have seen of others since Rick’s group came to Hershel’s farm. The raggedy caravan of vehicles is like a moving used car lot, made up of about a dozen random makes and models of all ages, including a small mini-bus with some Methodist church name emblazoned on the side. More significant to Rick’s mind is two police cruisers marked as Atlanta Police Department, surrounded by a group of people who seem to be looking at a map on the hood of the lead cruiser.

“They’re actually in uniform,” Maggie notes, raising her binoculars. “Looks like seven uniformed cops. I think they may be the drivers of most of the vehicles, since most of the driver’s seats seem empty.” She hums softly. “There’s also one in military fatigues.”

“Pass me the binoculars.” Rick accepts them when she passes them over readily. The odds that he’ll know any of the cops is probably unlikely, but apparently, it’s his lucky day. “I know one of the cops. Should be safe to approach.”

Everyone in the group goes on alert when they’re finally in earshot with the horses, which is far closer than a car’s engine would have alerted them. Rick raises a hand at the drawn weapons, waving. “You’re well out of your jurisdiction, Sergeant Lamson!”

“No such thing as jurisdiction anymore, buddy. How the hell do you know who I am.” The man is frowning, head tilted as he studies Rick and Maggie when they come to a halt just outside of range of the handguns. “Holy shit. Rick Grimes! Thought maybe you didn’t make it, when there was never any news after things started going to hell.”

Lamson motions for his people to lower their guns, holstering his own, so Rick slides out of the saddle. Maggie takes his reins, sitting relaxed in the saddle like only a lifetime horsewoman can. Rick goes in for a handshake, but finds himself drawn in for a hug instead. “Damn, man, it’s good to see you made it.”

“I almost didn’t. Was still in a coma when the hospital got evacuated to Atlanta, but a nurse stayed behind to look after me.”

The other cop flinches at the mention of Atlanta. “Might be for the best that you didn’t get evacuated, the way they abandoned us in Atlanta. We were helping evacuate Grady when they dropped napalm on us. Only thing left was to hole up at the hospital and wait, but months went by and no one came.”

“We went through Atlanta ourselves, months ago. Saw the city was bombed, and that the refugee center fell.” Rick takes a deep breath, remembering the devastated camp. “My family had evacuated there.”

“Oh, shit.” Lamson frowns, but then shakes his head. “There were survivors of the camp, Rick. Can’t guarantee your family was among them, but they got nearly two hundred people out. They gathered over on Stone Mountain.”

Hope shoots through Rick like he’s never felt before, but he’s afraid to latch on. To hope, and then have it turn out that his family isn’t among the survivors is almost more than his mind can comprehend. His pulse rate goes up, the flutter so hard he thinks that the other man ought to be able to see it in his throat. It takes him two tries to respond. “Are they still there?”

Lamson shakes his head. “They had a difference of opinion in staying close to the city. A woman took most of the surviving Guardsmen and pretty much all the families with kids and headed for the coast. It was a smart idea. The Stone Mountain camp got swarmed about two weeks ago. We only know what happened because a corporal got a half dozen people to safety before we found them on a patrol.”

“So you’re headed south?” Rick asks, voice thick with emotion.

“Yeah. My family was sent to the refugee center as part of the deal with the police department. It’s possible they survived, and now that I know? I’m off to find out. Plus those damn islands gotta be safer than anything in Atlanta.” Lamson glances toward Maggie. “That your nurse?”

“No.” Rick thinks of Alex, back at home in the cozy farmhouse. “We’ve been staying with her family. Place is secure as anything can get these days.” He motions Maggie forward, noticing how exhausted everyone in Lamson’s group looks. “Maggie? Think your dad would be up to visitors camping out?”

Although the urgency to get on the road and find out is gripping him in sharp claws, he has to go back and tell Alex. It wasn’t just his family at that refugee center. If he goes racing off without any preparation, it probably won’t be just Alex kicking his ass, either, since Morgan and Maggie would take turns, too.

“I can’t see him objecting.” Maggie smiles warmly at the gathered people. “Let’s get y’all behind solid walls for now and sort out the rest of the journey later.”

Rick’s grateful that the night is warm for early spring, since there are far too many visitors tonight for the farmhouse. Everyone seems happy to have a warm meal from the farm’s bounty. It’s still hard for Rick to comprehend that the wary looks most of the Grady survivors have is because of cops gone bad. 

Lamson’s shamed admission that it took the idea that his wife and son might still be alive for him to step up and take command was hard to hear. Out of eight cops who supported Lamson’s little coup, he’d lost two, and three were wounded in some form, but they’d put down all four of the abusers, at least.

Alex makes her way across the yard, prominent belly something that will make the next days complicated for everyone. She comes up the steps, letting him take her med kit. “Their doctor is a class A asshole,” she mutters. “But he did good work in patching the wounded up.”

He follows her inside, going to join the other adults from the farm. They have decisions to make, ones that affect more than just the two of them. Once everyone is seated at the table, he isn’t surprised when Patricia slides small plates of pie in front of everyone.

“I don’t think most of these people need to travel so far into the unknown,” Hershel says, looking concerned. “And as anxious as Alex is for answers, it’s not a journey I would recommend right now. Twenty-four weeks was still good for travel before, but this isn’t anything like back then.”

Rick’s honestly a little relieved, because it’s not a suggestion he feels he should be making. The idea of Alex out on the road is outright terrifying, because as capable as she is, she’s six months pregnant, and running is damn near impossible. Outside the walls, running almost always becomes a necessity.

Alex doesn’t object, thank goodness. “Part of me wants to argue, but I’ve lived with the idea that my girls were gone for close to a year now. I can wait a few days more to get answers.”

That settled, Rick sighs. “I know Lamson would send word back, but I feel like I should go. I know the area, especially south of Savannah, and no one else does.”

Hershel nods. “I agree. Sergeant Lamson should leave his untrained people and the wounded officers. Take his healthy ones, with you and Maggie for extra support. It’ll make it a fast trip, and not endanger the children he’s got with him. If you find a settlement, something safer than we have here, then we can make the arrangements to travel.”

“You’d really leave the farm, Daddy?” Maggie asks, looking astounded. Patricia and Otis look equally stunned, and Rick’s not far off himself.

“Our family may have worked this land for one hundred and sixty years, Maggie, but this isn’t a world where a single family can stand alone. If there’s a safe place, run by good people? Then I owe that much to all of you, but especially you, Bethie, and Jimmy.”

It makes sense, stated that way, that Hershel is willing to pull up stakes for his children and Jimmy’s sake. With the basics decided, Rick presses a kiss to Alex’s temple and heads outside to inform Lamson. Once he’s back inside, he sits beside her on the bed, laying his hands on either side of Alex’s belly. The babies roll and kick in response to the pressure.

“I am hoping with everything that I am that both our families are safe,” he tells her huskily. “But it doesn’t end this between us.” It can’t. He can’t let it end this, because Alex is as important to him as the rest of his family, even without considering the babies.

Alex studies him with more calm than he would manage, if he were in her place. That calm is belied by the hands he sees are fisted in the blankets next to her. “And if Lori doesn’t agree with that?”

Rick knows it’s a possibility that his ailing first marriage might not be over in Lori’s eyes, if she survived the horror of the refugee center falling. But even if he’s moved on out of a mistaken sense of finality, he can’t turn back. Not for Lori, and not for Shane, either. He didn’t stumble into this relationship with Alex in a spew of youthful emotions. Leaving her isn’t an option.

“She’ll just have to learn to accept it.” He eases his hands off their growing children and cups her face between his hands. “I’m in love with you. I married you. Nothing is going to change that.”

As strongly as he vows it, he still sees a shadow of doubt in her eyes. After how her marriage ended, and Ryan remarrying his first wife, he isn’t surprised. All he can do is prove it to her, and right now, they could be hoping and worrying for nothing. So instead of wallowing in those anxious emotions, he distracts her with soft kisses and caresses.

Her smile is soft and wistful as she finally relaxes, fingers letting go of the blanket to slip beneath his t-shirt. The firmly possessive touch glides over his skin. "Good, because I'm not willing to stand aside meekly, propriety be damned."

There's a sense of urgency that they've only had that first time together as they shed clothing, heightened by months of familiarity with each other. Then, he was memorizing every inch of her. Now, she's tracing his contours like it's the last time, and his heart aches for her uncertainty even as he whispers how much he loves her against her skin. For once, they don’t get back into pajamas afterward, content to lie skin to skin as they fall asleep.

Leaving the next morning is harder than Rick expected it to be. Alex watches them pull away, standing on the porch with her arms wrapped around Beth. Her expression is so forlorn that he wants to change his mind and insist they go together, as foolish as he knows it is.

The other part of it is settling into the driver’s seat next to Lamson, who turns his cruiser over to Rick and takes the passenger seat. He’s leading the little expedition, with Lamson’s partner driving the second cruiser and following. Sitting in any cruiser without Shane is like a punch to the gut.

“You still sure we should try Jekyll first?” Lamson has the map out, looking it over. “Tybee’s closer.”

“Tybee is right outside Savannah. It’ll be harder to reach, and if anyone’s familiar with the coast, they’ll bypass a heavily populated city in favor of the more remote islands.” Rick takes a deep breath. Lori wasn’t as familiar with the island as Shane, but both of them had been there more than once. “And if any of my family is there, they’d pick Jekyll first.”

“Alright. It’s not like we can’t head back north and search if we need to, right?” Neither of their passengers disagree with Lamson, so they ride in silence for a little while, before Rick’s nerves push him to talk.

“How old is your son?” The last time he saw Bob Lamson, it had been at advanced training classes at the academy, which probably explains the man’s sergeant rank. Rick hadn’t gotten the promotion in the end, thanks to a different sheriff being elected into office. But that had been six years ago, and Lamson was a newlywed then.

“Carlos is three now. My mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and two nieces were with him and Veronica when they went to the center.” Lamson sighs deeply, and Rick notes the use of present tense for his son and prays it’s true. “My brother-in-law died when Atlanta was bombed. He was a physical therapist at Grady, out waiting with patients. Never had a chance.”

“Our boys almost have the same name. Carl…” His voice catches before he continues, as he decides to take a note from Lamson’s book. “Carl’s thirteen.”

“Teenager. Better you than me, man.”

It makes them all laugh, including Maggie and the petite female officer Rick only knows as Bello. The amusement carries them through various small conversations, including a hopeful unease that the roads aren’t blocked the way they would expect. Well, they aren’t blocked until they reach the causeway onto Jekyll Island, but the seemingly random pattern isn’t random at all. 

Rick decides the obstacle course is a good sign, but his hands are still shaking just a little when they reach a set of reinforced gates that he thinks would take something high grade military to breach. “You or me?” he asks Lamson. 

The other man smiles weakly and opens his door. “I outrank you.”

Still, Rick can hear the greeting Lamson calls out to the gatekeepers, giving his full name and rank to the redheaded young man in military uniform. The gates open readily after a short conversation, with Lamson trotting back to get back in the car. “We’re supposed to follow him in the golf cart. All newcomers have to check in at the hotel they use as their community center.”

“Did he say who was in charge?” Rick asks, feeling the tremor in his hands increase. He grips the steering wheel harder, his knuckles turning white. “Are they from Atlanta?”

Lamson nods, and there’s tears in his eyes. “Everyone who left Stone Mountain made it here. My wife is here, Rick, and my son. Her whole family made it out. I asked about your family, too. The guard says they’re here. All three of them made it here.”

It’s more than Rick dared hope for, and he is damned grateful that the driver in the golf cart knows what urgency is like and speeds the little vehicle along the remainder of the causeway and onto the island with good haste. The buildings they pass look in good repair, and there’s not a walker to be seen. Several pedestrians do pause to watch the two police cruisers chasing a golf cart, which might make Rick laugh if he didn’t have “they’re alive” drumming on repeat in his brain.

He pushes away the oddity of parking the cruiser in front of the hotel like they’re going to check in for a vacation. There’s a tall, ebony-skinned woman with long dreadlocks waiting for them, but he doesn’t even absorb her greeting before he hears, “DAD!” His arms are full of his son, and they’re both sobbing and can’t let go of each other. Holding Carl as tight as he can, he can’t imagine anything better than this single moment. 

Carl is alive. All these months, he thought his boy was gone, and here’s the proof that he’s not, warm and breathing and crying in his arms.

“We thought you were dead, Dad,” Carl mutters against his chest. “Back at the hospital. Shane said…” The boy cuts off abruptly, making a sort of hiccuping sound.

“I almost was,” he reassures Carl. “But a nurse survived and looked after me.” It’s such a bland description of what Alex did for him that he can’t believe he stated it that way.

They have an audience aside from various adults, he realizes, a group of seven other kids, and his breath catches as he spots the two little blondes. Still holding Carl as close as he can manage, he looks at the girls, feeling almost dizzy on this day for absolute miracles, because he knows them both. “Lizzie? Mika?”

They’re a little confused, but the older one nods. “You know us?”

Rick shakes his head. “No, but I know your…” Mama might be the wrong word, as complicated as the situation is with Alex’s girls. “Alex was the nurse who saved me. She has your pictures.”

Mika bursts into tears, even as Lizzie takes a few cautious steps forward. “Alex is alive? Where is she?” Her blue gaze searches the women with Rick’s group, and disappointment takes hold when none of the three are Alex. He feels a surge of regret that he maybe should have waited until they had her right in front of them.

“She stayed behind to look after some injured people, while we scouted ahead to see if there really was a settlement here.” He presses a kiss to the top of Carl’s head, squeezing him even tighter. “We thought everyone at the center was gone, until yesterday. She's going to be out of this world happy to see you girls.”

The girls fling their arms around each other, with Lizzie whispering to her sister. Rick doesn’t catch most of it, but he does hear mama more than once. It gives him hope for Alex to reconcile with her daughters. If her ex-husband and the girls’ mother object, he’ll just have to help them figure out a solution.

“Where’s your mother, Carl? And Shane?” he asks, looking around. Seeing Carl, then the girls, it distracted him from the fact that Lori and Shane are nowhere to be seen. Lamson’s family has found him, a hodgepodge of women, girls, and a toddler boy that looks unmistakably like the other cop. But Rick doesn’t see Lori or Shane anywhere, despite Lamson being told all three made it.

Carl hesitates long enough to make Rick worry, before turning to the island’s leader. “Michonne? I know newcomers are supposed to be interviewed and everything, but can I take my dad to my house first? While you talk to the others?”

Understanding dawns on the woman’s face. “Sure, Carl. He's not really a stranger.”

Rick allows himself to be led down the street, heading toward the north part of the island. Worry blooms low in his gut, because something is just a little bit off in Carl’s body language. “Carl? Is something wrong with your mom?”

His son shakes his head, biting his bottom lip. Rick finally takes in the changes in the boy. He’s taller than Rick remembers, and dressed in good jeans, a clean henley shirt, and sturdy boots. Around his thin hips is a belt with a knife holstered on one side and a gun that Rick recognizes as Lori’s on the other. 

The oddity of his son openly carrying a gun, with Lori’s long held objections to him learning to shoot, sits uneasily in Rick’s mind. What happened to make her change her mind? When he thinks about the other children in Carl’s little group, Lizzie and two teenagers had also had guns, and even the younger ones had knives at their belts. He approves of the precaution, even on an island that he assumes is kept walker free much easier than anything on the mainland, but training kids is a level of alertness he didn't expect.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me, son.” It takes an effort to keep his voice soothing, pulling on all his law enforcement training. Something’s wrong, and Carl’s hedging on telling him the same way he used to when he was trying to stay out of trouble without actually telling a lie.

“It’s easier to maybe show you,” Carl says, sounding hesitant. “We thought you were dead, Dad. We really did.”

Rick mulls that over as they turn into a condominium complex. It might have taken him longer to start figuring it out, if it wasn’t for the wedding ring on his finger that feels almost like a brand right now. Carl’s soft repetition that they thought he was dead tells him that like Rick, Lori’s likely moved on in the eleven months since he was shot. He stays silent, letting Carl take the lead.

Carl unlocks the front door of a corner unit, calling out, “Mom? Are you home?”

The response is a baby’s angry cry, and Carl curses softly before blushing. “That’s Judith,” he explains as Rick freezes in the foyer. The teenager’s expression is as solemn as a funeral director’s. “She’s my sister, Dad, but she’s not your daughter.”

Before Rick can ask for clarification, it’s not Lori who steps into view, but Shane, carrying a tiny, whining baby against his shoulder. “Carl, you know it’s Judy’s naptime,” he starts before he spots Rick standing behind Carl. 

The stunned expression on the other man’s face lasts only a couple of seconds before complex emotions flit across his familiar features, finally settling on a tearful joy. Then Shane is moving again, and Rick finds out that Shane can still manage one hell of a bear hug with just one arm. It feels like home, like it always has when Shane hugs him, and Rick allows himself the luxury. At the same time, it’s also not home anymore. In the months they’ve been apart, the tangled, confusing remnants of first love have finally funneled into a brotherly affection that is truth instead of a socially acceptable illusion. Shane’s alive, and Rick's chest aches with the relief of it.

The baby kicks and squirms, still grumpy from being woken up, nuzzling into the crook of Shane’s neck like Carl used to do to Rick. It’s what gives Rick the ultimate clue as to who fathered Carl’s sister, but he can’t bring himself to care, not yet. Shock can do that, he knows, dull reality enough to let the mind come to terms with it.

Although he hasn’t actually seen Lori yet, he knows she’s okay because Carl called out for his mother, not Shane. Whatever this is, they’ll figure it out. Right now, his family is alive, and that’s all that matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I just can't see any crazy drama from Rick, because he's already moved on himself. Now it may not stay so calm once the shock wears off a little, but this won't come near S2 Drama.
> 
> Next chapter will shift to _Love is Unthinkable_ , so if you haven't been reading it, you might need to take a peek when it posts to get the full impact of the reunion.


	14. Risks Worth Taking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex settles into the island community, rebuilding her family to include her girls, Carl, and Rick, while waiting for the babies to make it complete.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter, folks.

**April - July 2011**

Alex honestly didn’t expect to see Rick back by dark, but he returns, the two cruisers followed by a small caravan with multiple RVs and trucks towing livestock trailers. That’s enough clues that the trip was at least nominally successful that everyone is staring as the cruiser pulls to a stop. The cops all head for their own people, but Rick and Maggie head for those waiting on the Greene porch.

They’re joined by a teenage boy, and a person would have to be blind not to know the boy is Carl Grimes. Rick slings his arm across Carl’s shoulders as they reach the porch, his smile near blinding as he introduces the boy to the extended family he adopted in their months apart. The fact that he waits until last to introduce Alex might have been offensive, except it’s so obviously meant to give Carl time to respond, unlike the quickly made introductions of the others.

“This is my wife, Alex,” Rick says, meeting her gaze with such affection that she heads down the steps to take the hand he holds out to her. 

Carl grins, and he’s almost bouncing with an infectious sort of energy. “I get to tell her, right, Dad?” Rick nods, and those eyes so like Rick’s focus on Alex with happy intensity. “Lizzie and Mika are on the island, Alex. They’re alive.”

The tide of emotions hits her almost like a physical blow. Relief, love, and an absolute need to see her girls again. “You’ve seen them?” she asks Rick, voice barely audible. He drops his arm from around Carl in order to hold her close.

“Yeah, with my own two eyes, sweetheart. They were at the center in Atlanta, but they got evacuated in time. Their mother didn’t make it, but Ryan’s been with them on the island since late June.”

“They’ve been hoping you might be found all along,” Carl adds. “And Lizzie wanted to come with us today, but Mika’s afraid to go off the island and Lizzie wouldn’t go without her.”

“Why don’t we all head inside?” Hershel suggests. “Get all the catching up somewhere comfortable, especially since it seems the new additions are well prepared to help us leave the farm.”

The island sounds almost perfect. It’s not that the farm isn’t safe, but its resources are limited. To have a doctor, another nurse, a school? Alex certainly likes what she’s hearing. Carl stays near her to tell her about Lizzie and Mika, once the others have dispersed. Without asking the boy directly, it seems like Lizzie is appropriately medicated, too.

It’s not until the boy’s bedded down on the couch, and Alex tucked in bed with Rick that she asks the most important question. “How did Lori take you reappearing?” She knows her voice is hesitant and hates it, even as her fingers curl into the fabric of Rick’s shirt almost involuntarily.

Rick presses a kiss to her lips, gentle and chaste. Lying close to her on the pillows, he smiles. “She and Shane have a daughter who is a month old.”

“Oh.” The math spins in her head quickly, and the baby would have been conceived in early summer, if she was full term. “How do you feel about that?”

“There was a little moment where it hurt, to be honest. They all thought I was dead, and for them to turn to each other so quickly, that was confusing at first. But I can’t imagine how hard everything was for them, so being angry or hurt about it? I can’t be, especially not now.” Rick’s left hand moves across her swollen stomach between them, and the twins respond as they always do. “At least with Shane, he was guaranteed to love Carl like his own, if I’d never found them.”

“The selfish part of me is glad,” she tells him, and he laughs. “I couldn’t handle what happened with Ryan, not again.”

“Well, even if Lori shocked me by changing her mind, that’s not going to happen. One thing about the world as it is now? Children can’t be used as pawns so easily, not in a community the size of the island. I already talked to the leader there about the girls. She’s going to set up a meeting with Ryan to sort things out. Seems she was a lawyer before.”

“And he’ll abide by what she decides?” Guilt eats at her, because she shouldn’t be relieved it’s only Ryan she has to deal with now. 

“I don’t think the girls will let him argue. That’s on your side now, too, you know. Lizzie’s plenty old enough to know her own mind, and honestly, so is Mika. It’s not like either of you would go days without seeing the girls with the island so small.”

With that reassurance, Alex lets herself be lulled asleep with thoughts of seeing her girls for the first time in years. If Rick’s this confident, she’s just going to believe everything will work out herself.

Rick’s prediction is right, except there’s no argument from Ryan whatsoever. Her ex-husband apologizes profusely, barely able to meet her eyes as the girls cling to her, sobbing. 

The relief of having both of them alive and well in her arms carries her past the weirdness that comes from living in the same small section of the condo complex Shane and Lori already reside in. She and Rick end up three units down from them, and Ryan moves from the hotel to a unit on the other side of the street. The girls and Carl coordinate a schedule somehow, migrating households together.

Some days, their home is full of happy, sometimes squabbling children. Other days, they’re left in to enjoy the quiet while it lasts, because once the twins come, there will be precious little quiet to be had. Alex remembers the tales her mother had of her brother and her as infants and then toddlers, but she’s looking forward to the chaos.

“Are you sure the babies won’t need their own room?” Lizzie asks, frowning as she and Mika study the intructions for the crib. The girls want to assemble it, and Rick ceded the job to their able hands. “I mean, we can share with Carl, especially since we aren’t here all the time.”

“Or with the babies!” Mika pipes up, looking enthusiastic about the idea. Alex knows it’ll be defused quickly once the reality of crying babies is part of their lives. They’ve spent time with Judith, but the little girl is one of the calmest, quietest babies Alex has ever seen. If she weren’t so obviously intent on following voices, she would actually be concerned if the baby had hearing loss.

“For the first year, it’s really better if they’re close by. That way they don’t have to wait so long for me or Rick to get to them.” 

Lizzie thinks it over and nods, before holding up the first piece and directing Mika on the next step. It’s one of the things Denise has discovered about Lizzie’s mental health issues. Having intricate things to focus on helps as much as medication, so she’s learning a lot of mechanical and electronic tasks, including spending two afternoons a week with the island engineer, Eugene. The man’s happy to have an apprentice, and Lizzie seems fond enough of him.

The fact that the initial doctor on the island is a qualified psychiatrist was a wonderful thing to learn. Medications are stocked for years for Lizzie’s needs, and while they may lose some effectiveness over time, dosages can simply be adjusted. But if non-medication methods help, they owe it to Lizzie to explore them.

“Do we get to help pick their names?” Mika asks, once the crib is starting to resemble a crib. “Carl picked out Judith’s first name.”

“Well, how about this? You each put together a list of names you like, and then Rick, Carl, and I will vote on which we like best.” She knows the male family members won’t mind, especially since Carl did already get to choose one of Judith’s names. “Lori gave me her baby name book, so you can get it from the coffee table when we’re done here.”

The excitement makes the crib assembly go quickly, followed by the changing table that is one of two. The other one is already set up in the living room and well stocked with disposable diapers and wipes. Aside from the crib, everything in the house for the babies will be duplicated.

But baby preparations can only take up so much time, and the girls do have a routine to return to once they’ve gotten over the fear that Alex might somehow disappear. Alex has never managed anything approaching just staying home all day. Rick’s taken on a supply team until she’s closer to delivery. Luckily there’s more than enough work to go around for an able bodied man, on and off the island.

Alex ends up seeking out Michonne for ideas on what she can do by the end of April. There’s not a lot of need for a full time nurse, although she does use her pediatric experience to review all the island children’s files. 

“You sure you feel up to teaching?” Denise asks as Alex settles into a comfortable chair in the room set up for adult students at the hotel. 

It was Denise who suggested Alex start teaching nursing classes to interested adults, which turned out to be a group of eight. She’ll teach in the morning, and Lilly will take over for the afternoon session. It’s considered a task of highest importance, passing on medical knowledge and training.

For the non-teaching part of their days, the two nurses will spend time with Denise, adding to their training. It’s a little easier for Alex, who already has years of extra education compared to Lilly, but with the grumpy doctor from Grady also available, Denise has the time. More importantly, the psychiatrist has the personality to teach. Edwards is one of those doctors that Alex’s fellow nurses used to say was a one-hit wonder, stuck in his speciality with little bedside manner. Teaching is not a skill he’s managed to add to his repetoire even with the world coming to an end.

“I’ll go out of my mind with boredom if I sit at home, and even the garden doesn’t need enough attention to keep me entertained.” A backyard full of edible plants in raised beds soothes Alex’s frugal soul, even though there are larger fields producing food in community necessary quantities.

Her students arrive, and Alex shoos Denise away. Babies are a precious commodity on the island, so she understand the hovering, but someone else can take a turn being pampered if Denise needs to do it. In addition to Alex, there are three other women expecting babies between August and November, after all.

There’s so much more noise on the island than Alex is used to, and sometimes she misses the quiet days of the hopital. Those moments always make her feel a little horrified, because Rick’s survival is nothing short of a miracle. She knew it then, but having Denise and Edwards review her notes just clarified it for her. He lived, he’s healthy, and he’ll stay that way if she has any say in it.

Being around Ryan is more awkward than Alex ever expected, partly because there are years she can never get back with her girls. Slowly forming a friendship with Lori is easier, because she and Rick never had an acrimonious divorce to fester things to the point the idea of actual friendship is too difficult to consider.

So as May slides by, she spends her days teaching, and half her evenings with her expanded family, and marvels at the happy smiles Lori gives her as she passes over each box of things that Judith outgrows. As time passes, they all studiously ignore the anniversary of the day Rick got shot while concentrating on Alex’s birthday as she turns thirty-six at the end of May. 

Lizzie turned thirteen in April and Mika turns eleven in June. Celebrating those birthdays is the best thing that’s happened to Alex since the divorce snatched them away from her.

The other best thing? That happens on July sixteenth.

It’s early, but not abnormally so for twins, just a few days into the thirty-seventh week of pregnancy, and labor lasts an hour short of a full day. The fact that Nadia arrives nineteen minutes ahead of Noah seems fitting, having a boy as the eldest and youngest of the family. She’s also five ounces heavier, at five pounds and nine ounces.

Alex is weepy from exhaustion and happiness, and Rick and the kids aren’t much better. Labor lasted long enough that the kids left at bedtime and returned when summoned, since of course the babies arrived as dawn was starting to break. She doubts they got much sleep, and Carl is hovering between the girls as they sit with a sibling each in their arms.

Rick leans in to kiss her, distracting her from the way the sunlight turns the girls’ hair into golden halos. Tears fall then, because she’s hit with the sudden sense of loss. She’s been so grateful to have her girls back in her life that it’s overridden the most important part missing until now.

“What’s wrong?” Rick asks, glancing around the infirmary as if the answer is somewhere around them. 

“I miss my brother,” she says through tears that fall in earnest now. “He always hoped that the girls would come back to us one day. The babies… he would so have loved seeing the babies, too.”

She’s gathered into Rick’s arms as he holds her close. That had been a hard question to answer when the girls asked about their uncle. It had been even worse that it wasn’t even the virus or walkers, but that he’d been gone for two full years by the time they were reunited. He reassures the kids with quiet words, letting her cry out a sense of grief that is suddenly as fresh as it was when it happened.

Once she’s all cried out, Lizzie’s waiting, climbing up into the bed beside her. Carl has Noah now, with Mika still cuddling Nadia close. “Maybe instead of Noah, we should call him Alvaro,” she suggests quietly, sniffling a little herself. Noah had been her selected name, one she was quite proud of being the favorite for the boy.

Alex manages a smile for her eldest daughter. “No, sweetheart, he deserves to have his own name for his first name. You’ll just have to help me tell them both stories about him.” Her son’s middle name is Samuel, because without Alex’s boss back at the hospital in King County, neither of her children would exist today. He died to save Alex, and she’ll never forget the sacrifice.

“I can do that. Maybe I’ll even write them down, everything I can remember. Then they will have a book about him, since it’s not fair that we knew him and they won’t.” Lizzie peers across Alex to her sister. “Mika can help. Her handwriting is prettier than mine.”

Mika beams at the compliment. “I can do that.” Rick takes Nadia when Mika asks, and the younger girl takes his spot on the bed, easing an arm around Alex’s middle.

Carl clears his throat, shifting Noah in his arms as he comes to perch at the foot of the bed. “We should have everyone do that. Write the stories of the people who didn’t make it to the island, so they’re always remembered.”

“Our own little library,” Rick comments. The ease that he cradles Nadia on his shoulder makes Alex smile despite her sorrow, although the children are doing a good job of shifting her mood. “I wouldn’t mind reading all those biographies, so we don’t forget where we came from.”

When he steps back beside the bed, reaching down with his free hand, Alex takes him by the wrist instead, pressing her thumb to the strong pulse in his wrist. Her mind still dredges up a sense memory of gripping his ankle that lifechanging day she first ‘met’ him, feeling the barely there pulse. There’s nothing feeble about what she feels now.

Thirteen months ago, she took a chance that she could save him, grasping at anything to save her sanity among the horrors she’d seen and heard that day. Today is the ultimate reward for conquering her fears, and their children clustered around them are proof that where life will lead you may be unknowable, but some risks are always worth taking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter fought me like a rabid and cranky raccoon, but it's as done as it can possibly get. :)
> 
> One last Grenade chapter to come for Merle and Princess to tidy up their storyline...


End file.
